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THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

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TORONTO 



THE HISTORY 

OF 

EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

AN INTRODUCTORY BOOK 



BY 

WALTER T. MARVIN 



£fom fnrk 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

1917 

All rights reserved 



A3 



Copyright, 1917 

By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

Set up and electrotyped. Published May, 1917. 



JUN-I 1917 



GI.A467222 
\ 



3fo 

HOWARD CROSBY WARREN 



PREFACE 

The purpose I have had in mind to fulfill in writing 
this book has been solely pedagogical. I have not en- 
deavored to add anything whatever to our knowledge 
of the history of philosophy, and if by chance I have any- 
where offered new points of view, this has been quite 
subordinate to my main purpose. On the contrary, I 
have in several chapters deliberately depended upon one 
selected secondary source and in a few chapters I have 
ventured even to quote my secondary authority at length. 
(I have indicated this indebtedness wherever I have 
thought it of any importance to the reader to do so.) 

Two pedagogical considerations have determined the 
character of the book. First, my experience is, that the 
traditional and conventional text-book on the history of 
philosophy, however excellent and scholarly, is not well 
adapted to the needs of undergraduate students. Such a 
book is an epitome of the doctrines of the great philosoph- 
ical thinkers, and is both unintelligible to the beginner and 
too detailed to be learned and remembered by him. It 
attempts to make the student acquainted with the diffi- 
cult and detailed doctrines and reasonings of the philoso- 
phers when only a long and careful study of their writings 
can really bring this about. Moreover, it fails by not 
relating the information it gives to the other historical 
information prerequisite to the study of the history of 
philosophy, and thus it forms, if learned, a sort of logic- 
tight compartment with no openings into the fields of 
psychology and anthropology, of general political, social 
and economic history, and of the history of literature, 

vii 



viii PREFACE 

art, and general culture. It ignores the fact that the 
philosophy of any period or age is the outcome of the 
total civilization and of the changing civilization of the 
time. Hence to avoid these errors, I have tried to con- 
fine my book to major philosophical movements and 
to approach the study of any philosophical movement 
from the general history of the era, and I have tried to 
indicate the relations between the philosophy of the age 
and the other great spiritual and social changes that 
were taking place. Second, a beginner's text-book on 
the history of philosophy, in my opinion, should include 
as few details as possible, should leave much to be taught 
directly by the instructor in charge of the course, and 
should presuppose that the student is to do a large amount 
of outside reading. To make this reading possible the 
text-book must be brief and concise, and must resemble 
in its character a syllabus. However, it may properly 
include more topics than the student will have time to 
study at length, so that the instructor may select from 
the list the topics most suitable to the needs and interests 
of the individual student. 

The readings I have suggested are merely suggestions, 
though serious ones. They are not bibliographies. 

Walter T. Marvin. 
Rutgers College, 

March 24th, 1917. 



CONTENTS 



PART I— INTRODUCTORY 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. The Recency of Civilization 1 

1. The relative recency of civilization. 2. The 
causes of the rise and growth of civilization. 3. The 
primitive beliefs and customs the source of the later 
civilization. 4. The survival of the primitive within 
civilization. 5. Conclusion. 

II. The History of Philosophy 12 

1. The history of the growth of knowledge. 2. The 
meaning of the term, philosophy. 3. Philosophical 
growth and its causes. 4. The program of this book. 

III. Changes in Man's Mental Nature Wrought by 

Civilization 20 

1. Introductory. 2. Learning by imitation. 3. The 
broadening of curiosity. 4. Increase of the ability to 
analyze. 5. Man becomes less crudely emotional 
6. Man becomes less crudely suggestible. 7. Man 
becomes more sociable. 8. Conclusion. 

IV. Primitive Knowledge and Thought 31 

1. Primitive thought. 2. Three kinds of beliefs 
held by the primitive thinker. 3. Primitive verified 
knowledge. 4. Primitive speculative knowledge. 
5. The influence of social organization. 6. Con- 
clusion. 
V. From Primitive Thought to Science 49 

1. Introductory. 2. Primitive custom and reli- 
gion. 3. National and international religions. 4. 
From religion to science. 5. The conflict of science 
with religion. 6. The mutual influence of religion 
and science. 

ix 



x CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

VI. The Two Major Periods in the History of Euro- 
pean Philosophy 59 

1. The three major periods of history. 2. The first 
coming of science. 3. The major periods in the de- 
velopment of scientific thought. 

PART II— ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY 

VII. The Mediterranean Period 67 

1. Greek science and philosophy. 2. The periods 
of Greco-Roman science. 

VIII. From Religion to Science in Greece 71 

1. Greek religion. 2. Greek theology. 3. The 
influence of Greek theology upon Greek science. 
4. The two currents in Greek philosophy. 5. Intel- 
lectualistic naturalism and romanticism have re- 
mained rivals throughout the history of European 
philosophy. 

IX. The Early Period 78 

1. Introductory. 2. The important discoveries 
known to have been made in the early period of 
Greek science. 3. The eastern, or Ionic philosophical 
tradition. 4. The western, or Italic philosophical 
tradition. 

X. The Atomic Theory 95 

1. Important stages in the evolution of early cos- 
mology toward atomism. 2. The atomic theory. 
3. Conclusion. 

XI. The Athenian Period 109 

1. The major political changes in the Athenian 
period. 2. Athens the center of greatest Greek cul- 
ture. 3. The age of enlightenment. 4. The field of 
the enlightenment. 5. The new fields of scientific 
development. 6. Scientific progress along the older 
lines. 7. The major philosophical problems of the 
Athenian period. 
XII. The Great Thinkers of the Athenian Period: 

Protagoras and Democritus 120 

1. Protagoras. 2. Democritus. 



CONTENTS xi 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XIII. The Great Thinkers op the Athenian Period: 

Socrates and Plato 132 

1. Socrates. 2. The Socratic doctrine of forms, or 
ideas. 3. The Socratic doctrine of the nature of the 
good. 4. Plato. 5. Plato's contribution to science. 
6. The Platonic philosophy. 7. Plato's defense of 
science against the Eleatics of Megara. 8. In Plato's 
philosophy mathematics is the fundamental science. 
9. The world-soul. 10. Plato's cosmology. 

XIV. The Great Thinkers op the Athenian Period: 

Aristotle . 150 

1. Introductory. 2. The relation of the philosophy 
of Aristotle to that of Plato and Democritus. 3. Aris- 
totle the Platonist. 4. Aristotle the vitalist. 5. The 
Aristotelian cosmology. 6. Aristotle's philosophy of 
life. 

XV. The Hellenistic and Roman Periods 164 

1. Introductory. 2. Religion. 3. Philosophy. 
4. Scientific progress. 

XVI. The Philosophical Schools 185 

1. Introductory. 2. The philosophical schools of 
the Hellenistic and Roman periods. 3. The Epi- 
curean school. 4. The Stoic school. 5. Neoplatonism. 

XVII. The Roman Law 211 

1. Introductory. 2. The entrance of Hellenic cul- 
ture into Rome. 3. The development of the Roman 
private law. 4. The jus naturale. 

XVIII. The Christian Philosophy 223 

1. Introductory. 2. The development of Chris- 
tian philosophy. 3. Augustine. 4. Gregory the 
Great. 5. Conclusion. 

PART III— MODERN PHILOSOPHY 

XIX. The Atlantic Period 243 

1. Introductory. 2. The development of medieval 
and modern culture. 3. The culture of the Atlantic 
period contrasted with that of the Mediterranean 



xii CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

period. 4. Ancient philosophy contrasted with 
modern philosophy. 

XX. Medieval Thought 250 

1. The medieval mind. 2. The three factors at 
work in medieval thought. 3. The course through 
which medieval thought developed. 4. The content 
of medieval philosophic thought. 

XXI. The Age op Discovery 275 

1. Introductory. 2. The factors giving rise to the 
age of discovery. 3. The course of discovery and the 
great discoveries. 4. The broadening of the field of 
discovery and of science. 5. The conflict of science 
with prescientific and medieval belief and cus- 
tom. 
XXII. The Modern Philosophical Movements 301 

1. Introductory. 2. The survival of prescientific 
thought. 3. The modern philosophical movements. 

4. The course of modern philosophical movements 
and the philosophical tendencies of the nineteenth 
and twentieth centuries. 

XXIII. Rationalism and Naturalism „■ 314 

1. The problem of method. 2. Naturalism: The 
universe conceived as a perpetual motion machine. 
3. Rationalism and naturalism in religion. 4. Ra- 
tionalism and naturalism in physiology. 5. Ra- 
tionalism and naturalism in psychology. 6. Ration- 
alism and naturalism in social and moral science. 

7. The development of toleration. 8. The idea of 
progress. 9. The effect of naturalism upon the gen- 
eral intellectual life of the modern world. 

XXIV. Phenomenalism, Positivism, and Idealism 341 

1. Introductory. 2. The terms, Phenomenalism 
and Empiricism defined. 3. Phenomenalism and 
Idealism. 4. Phenomenalism in modern thought. 

5. The subjectivistic problem of knowledge. 6. Em- 
piricism and positivism. 7. Objective idealism. 

8. The influence of phenomenalism and positivism 
upon the intellectual life of the past two centuries. 



CONTENTS 



Xlll 



CHAPTER 

XXV. 



PAGE 

359 



The Doctrine op Evolution 

1. Introductory. 2. Geological and biological 
evolution. 3. The doctrine of natural selection. 

4. Evolution as a part of the philosophy of the intel- 
lectual world. 5. The influence of evolution upon the 
general trend of present philosophical thought. 

XXVI. Romanticism 369 

1. Introductory. 2. Romanticism as a philosoph- 
ical movement. 3. Romanticism as a philosophical 
doctrine. 4. Romanticism and science. 5. Roman- 
ticism and primitive thought. 6. The influence of 
romanticism upon the thought of the nineteenth 
century. 

XXVII. Present Philosophical Tendencies 384 

1. Introductory. 2. The scientific achievement of 
the nineteenth century. 3. The great discoveries of 
marked philosophical importance. 4. Naturalism. 

5. Rationalism and experimentalism. 6. Intellec- 
tualism and pragmatism. 7. The new realism. 
8. Social democracy. 

XXVIII. Conclusion 429 

1. The complexity of our present intellectual life. 
2. The central tendency man of to-day and the cen- 
tral tendency man of the intellectual class. 3. The 
near future of present philosophical tendencies. 4. 
The individual and the group mind. 5. The two as- 
pects of man's intellectual progress. 



PART I 
INTRODUCTORY 



THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN 
PHILOSOPHY 

CHAPTER I 

THE RECENCY OF CIVILIZATION 

1. The relative recency of civilization. — Man has not 

always been the man we now behold. Man sprang from 
a brute ancestry and took many tens of thousands of years 
to reach the level of civilization found at the beginning of 
what we usually call history, that is, the level attained 
four thousand years before Christ in the lands bordering 
upon the Mediterranean Sea. Even the beginnings of 
Egyptian, Sumerian and Babylonian civilization seem but 
of yesterday, if their recency is compared with the remote- 
ness of the time when man first used the rudest stone tools. 
Moreover, from the dawn of history to our own day, 
during this period of less than ten thousand years, parts 
of the human race have developed not only relatively but 
also absolutely to a far greater extent than man developed 
during the preceding one hundred thousand years. The 
three familiar and wonderful examples of this rapidly 
developing civilization in the western world have been the 
three thousand years of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia 
preceding the Christian era, the twelve hundred years of 
Greco-Roman history from 800 B. C. to 400 A. D. and the 
seven hundred years of modern Europe from the beginning 
of the thirteenth century to the present time. 

1 



2 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

For further study read: 

Robinson, J. H., The New History, 1911, 236-266; 
Marett, R. R., Anthropology (Home University Library); 
Clodd, E., The Story of Primitive Man, 1910; 
Ratzel, The History of Mankind, 1896, Book I. 

For more extensive study read: 

Osborn, H. F., Men of the Old Stone Age, 1915; 

Sollas, Ancient Hunters and their Modern Representatives, 
1915; 

Buttel-Reepen, Man and his Forerunners, 1913; 

Keith, A., Antiquity of Man, 1915; 

Meyer, E., Geschichte des Altertums, 3te. Aufl. } 1910, Bd. 
I, Erste Halfte; 

MacCurdy, G. G., Recent Discoveries Bearing on the An- 
tiquity of Man, 1910 (from Smithsonian Report of 1909); 

Haddon, A. C., History of Anthropology, 1910. 

2. The causes of the rise and growth of civilization: 
(a) The further evolution of man's brain. — Psychology 
limits the possible causes at work in evolving civilization 
to two distinct types. First, man's inborn mental na- 
ture, the nervous system given him by heredity, may have 
been improving. Second, man's environment, that is, the 
sum total of the factors acting upon this inborn nature, 
may have become more and more favorable to further 
civilization. If the first cause has been present, man's 
progress can be explained in the same way as can man's 
superiority to the brute. That is to say, we can argue that 
precisely as the brain of prehistoric man had evolved to a 
higher type than that possessed by his prehuman ancestor; 
so man's brain has continued to evolve to a higher and 
higher type, with the result that the European has a better 
brain to-day than had the European six thousand years 
ago. To repeat, if such an evolution has indeed taken place, 
it would explain man's recent progress in civilization; for 
it would give the modern a superior intellect, or capacity 



THE RECENCY OF CIVILIZATION 3 

for civilization, to that of prehistoric man, precisely as the 
earlier neural evolution gave to prehistoric man an intellect 
superior to that of the beasts whom he hunted, not by his 
greater strength or speed, but by his manual dexterity, 
his weapons and his strategy. However, we may not ac- 
cept this possible cause; for all the evidence that we as yet 
have from historian, anthropologist, and psychologist, 
indicates no important advance in the inborn structure of 
the human brain during the past six thousand years, and 
certainly no advance comparable to that which must have 
taken place in our race's evolution remote ages ago. Per- 
haps the most that can be maintained in favor of the 
belief that man's inborn nature has improved, is that nat- 
ural selection may have tended to weed out the feebler 
intellects, may have favored the better intellects, and 
thereby may have raised slightly not the best but the 
average intellect. 

(b) The influence of the environment. — Be this as it 
may, the second possible cause, namely, the environment, 
has been by far the more potent factor; for the evidence 
we have, indicates that environment has been not only 
an indispensable but also a sufficient cause of human 
progress. Expressed in briefest and baldest form, the 
invention of tools and of arts has increased the food supply, 
this has increased the population, and the last has increased 
socialization and civilization. Once in existence, a little 
civilization can by the same process beget further civili- 
zation and an increased civilization can beget a higher and 
higher civilization at a rate comparable to a geometrical 
progression. A stimulating and favorable climate, a good 
geographical habitat, natural wealth in food, in wood, and 
in minerals, more efficient instruments for tillage, for 
transportation, for building, and for the various industries, 
a denser population, an increased socialization, a more 
efficient language, a wider acquaintance with other lands, 



4 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

their people, and their customs, a nobler architecture 
and nobler plastic arts, a richer industrial, biographical, 
social, and artistic tradition, and a written lore, have each 
and all been either contributing or indispensable causes 
for the continued growth of civilization. Many of them 
have been stimuli that excite curiosity, that suggest prob- 
lems, and that arouse novel thoughts and other new ways 
of reacting. Moreover, such a growth in civilization pro- 
vides more and more the indispensable tolerance and re- 
ward for inventiveness, for analytical thought, and for 
critical reflection. Soon it provides also as stimuli the 
deeds and thoughts of great men, stimuli which excite 
younger men to study, to imitate, and to criticise the arts, 
the customs, and the doctrines of their elders. Thus the 
very enterprise of progress becomes itself a tradition and 
a profession. Finally, from the very beginning, civiliza- 
tion tends to become an international possession and 
nations tend to contribute mutually to further progress; 
for in the early stages of civilization as well as in the later, 
beliefs and customs tend to spread, carried by the trader, 
the traveller, and the warrior. 

However, a word of caution must be added to this story 
of the influence of environment upon civilization. Civili- 
zation does not always beget higher civilization. Civiliza- 
tion can remain stationary, it can decline back even into 
savagedom. Civilized environments are exceeding complex 
and are never alike in different times and in different places; 
and unfortunately some of the greatest or most rapid 
advances in civilization seem to have been dependent 
upon some quite exceptional combination of environmental 
factors, since often in man's history these most rapid 
advances have persisted for but relatively short periods. 

(c) The influence of the exceptional man. — The pres- 
ence of a subordinate psychological factor indispensable 
to the growth of civilization should be noted in addition 



THE RECENCY OF CIVILIZATION 5 

to the two ultimate factors, change in inborn nature and 
environment. This factor is the man of exceptionally high 
ability. Could we see the thousands and thousands of in- 
ventions and novel thoughts and deeds actually in the mak- 
ing, the thousands of individual acts that have been the 
most important events in history, whom should we see to 
have been their true authors? From what we know regard- 
ing some of these events which the historian has been able 
to examine in detail, and from what is psychologically 
most probable, we can infer that the true authors were in 
most instances men above the average ability of their 
horde, tribe, or nation. To guess what the history of 
Europe would have been, had this or that man of genius 
not been born, may be utterly idle; but it is not venture- 
some to assert that our civilization would never have 
arisen, had some superhuman agent destroyed in each 
generation all the children whose inborn mental nature 
ranked among the highest ten per cent in excellence. If 
this is true, then the following propositions are of great 
importance in the study of history. First, the denser the 
population the greater will be the absolute number of these 
exceptional children and the higher will be the probability 
that among them are some children of quite extraordinary 
ability. In other words, though the average inborn mental 
nature may not have improved in the course of the past 
six thousand years, the inborn nature can be said to have 
improved absolutely wherever population has greatly in- 
creased in number. And such an increase is typical of 
advancing civilization. Second, psychology shows that en- 
vironment brings about far greater and far more desirable 
changes in the mental nature of the exceptionally capable 
child than in that of his mediocre companion. That is, he 
is more easily civilized. Third, the exceptionally capable 
men are as a type far more masterful and inventive than 
the mediocre, and therefore they are to a greater degree 



6 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

makers of their environment, to a less degree dependent 
upon favorable environment, and in general they are the 
probable human authors of progress. 1 

(d) The causes of the slowness of progress in prim- 
itive civilization. — Such being the causes of the growth 
of civilization, why were the earliest stages of primitive 
culture so very long? This problem is for the most part 
psychological and, if so studied, is easily solved. The 
first tools must have been the objects that untutored man 
would pick up and use instinctively, such as sticks and 
stones. However, that a stone could be fastened to a 
stick, was as far beyond this wild man's dreams as was the 
electric locomotive; and of course that a stone could be 
chipped or polished into useful shapes never entered his 
thoughts. Such habits must have had several stages and 
each of these stages doubtless had to wait for some happy 
accident to occur among man's animal-like and quite un- 
reflective experiments. Indeed, to expect them to occur 
as reflective inventions rather than as lucky accidents 
would be as absurd as to expect the baby to begin his 
mathematical thinking with the notions of the calculus. 
We should recall that it is quite impossible for us to imag- 
ine or to think about objects that lie altogether beyond 
our experience, for example, for an infant to think about 
bacteria or for a savage to invent an automobile. Think- 
ing always presupposes knowledge. Therefore the be- 
ginnings of culture had to be unreflective or quite acci- 
dental. Moreover, if this conclusion is probable of such 
simple habits as fastening a stone to a stick, how much the 

1 1 say "human authors of progress," for we must not forget that 
even the most gifted of men but shares in this authorship with his 
environment. Without a favorable environment to stimulate him 
he would not invent or progress and without such an environment 
to reward and to foster his enterprises they would die in their very 
beginnings. 



THE RECENCY OF CIVILIZATION 7 

more should we expect that only the happiest and most 
infrequent of accidents could have led to the discovery of 
such processes as the making of fire, the tilling of the soil, 
the making of pottery, and the working of copper and iron! 

3. The primitive beliefs and customs the source of 
the later civilization. — Precisely as man's body has 
evolved out of the body of his anthropoid ancestor and 
precisely as human instincts have grown out of the in- 
stincts of the early primates; so also has the civilization 
that we study in history evolved from the primitive cus- 
toms of prehistory. Moreover, there follows the im- 
portant corollary: a people's culture, as found by the his- 
torian, cannot be understood by him until he discovers 
the primitive beliefs and customs from which that culture 
evolved. Nowadays this principle seems to us almost a 
truism; for with our evolutionary habits of thought we 
cannot see how history can be studied otherwise. 

During the period of recorded history the fact of evolu- 
tion is evident. Civil law and political institutions, in- 
dustrial, commercial and banking customs, methods of 
transportation and numberless machines have evolved by 
stages that are known in detail; and some of these stages 
have been gone through almost before our very eyes. And 
if the new has grown out of the old when progress has 
been so largely the result of reflective thought, how surely 
must it have so grown in the early days of history! The 
evidence that it did so is abundant. The anthropologists 
and the students of the dawn of history are revealing to 
us everywhere the growth of early civilization out of 
primitive culture, for example, in the political and social 
organization of peoples, in their religion and speculations, 
in their buildings, and in their tools and industries. Even 
such sciences as medicine, chemistry, astronomy, and 
history grew directly from primitive magic and myths. 

Let us consider a few familiar instances. The Greek 



8 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY . 

tragedy grew out of religious ritual and songs and retained 
even in the days of its greatest glory its thoroughly reli- 
gious character. The epic is evidently the outgrowth of 
the songs or ballads chanted or recited by the bards. In 
the ancient religions of the Mediterranean world the 
sacrifices and the sacraments grew directly from the savage 
practices of totemism Qr similar customs. The fast and 
other holy days are the offspring of earlier savage tabooes. 
The prayers are later stages of the magic words by which 
the seer compelled the totem or other power to obey him; 
and some gods at least are the descendants of totems 
worshipped by earlier generations. The domestication of 
animals probably goes back to the customs of caring for 
the totem or sacred animal. The beginnings of the study 
of the stars and of theories that we may call the first 
astronomy grew out of early magic and related religious 
customs of which astrology is another descendant. The 
beginnings of what may be rightly called medical science 
developed out of the practices of the magician or medicine 
man; and modern chemistry is the offspring of medieval 
alchemy. The ancestry of Roman and English civil law 
is to be found in the customs of these peoples in earlier 
generations. Finally, the political and social organization 
of ancient Rome or of any other great nation, ancient or 
modern, goes back to the tribal customs of their ancestors; 
and those differences between nations in their political 
and social organization which even revolutions and cen- 
turies of intercourse cannot eradicate often go back to 
ancestral customs older than the nation itself. The 
solidly practical and efficient management of the Roman 
government as compared with that of the typical Greek 
governments is an example of such a difference. " We can 
see this peculiar gift showing itself at all stages of their (Ro- 
man) development: in the agricultural family which was 
the germ of all their later growth, in the city-state which 



THE RECENCY OF CIVILIZATION 9 

grew from that germ, and in the Empire, founded by the 
leaders of the city-state, and organized by Augustus and 
his successors." 1 

4. The survival of the primitive within civilization. — 
A remarkable fact in the evolution of civilization, as 
in all other evolution, is that the old persists often along 
with the new. As man's skeleton remains to a large extent 
the skeleton of his quadrupedal ancestors; so also do tools, 
customs, laws, institutions, and beliefs retain countless 
vestiges of the older or even savage beginnings from which 
they evolved. For example, the marriage ring, the rice 
thrown at the departing bride, the gargoyles on Gothic 
churches, the shaking of hands are vestiges of the customs 
of an immemorial past. The common law retains numerous 
elements going back to the customs of barbaric ancestors 
and the treatment of the criminal remains still partly 
barbaric. Church and college are especially rich in ves- 
tiges of great antiquity. Among our beliefs, even in the 
most cultured circles, remain to this day many stupid 
fears or superstitions. Finally in science as well vestiges 
of savage beliefs are not difficult to find. Psychology and 
biology still retain many remnants of the animism, or 
'demon theory of primitive peoples. For many the mind 
and its faculties are a sort of jack-in-the-box that does 
things and needs not itself to be explained. A similar 
vestige of the day when nature was thought of as full 
of demons, spooks, and other living agents is to be found 
in the notion, "force," as entertained by physicists in re- 
cent centuries. 

However, the most extensive survival of primitive 
beliefs and customs is to be found in what we may call the 
humbler strata of civilized societies. Precisely, as some 
areas of the earth's surface reveal in the geological strata 
that compose them deposits not only of many periods but 
1 Fowler, Rome, p. 14. 



10 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

also of periods of remote geological ages; so civilized society 
reveals in the groups of people that compose it, from the 
most ignorant to the most cultured, the survival of differ- 
ent levels of civilization. In lands that are least progres- 
sive, in remote and lonely districts, among the lowest 
peasantry, fisher folk and sailors and in the slums of our 
great cities we are likely to find prevalent many beliefs and 
customs of the distant past. Here the religion, the supersti- 
tions, the medical practice, and the beliefs regarding the 
growth of plants and animals, regarding life and mind, and 
regarding the processes of nature about us and above us 
are often not only as crude as that of barbarians but also 
as ancient. 

If all of this is true, the student of history is to seek and 
to expect to find everywhere within the beliefs and customs 
which make up the culture of any land or age, older and 
even primitive beliefs and customs, which have come from 
the ancestral culture of that land or age. For example, the 
religion of the golden age of Greece, as students of Greek re- 
ligion are to-day pointing out, contains numerous vestiges 
of the savage religion of a vastly older culture. And what 
is true of the religion of Greece is true of all ancient reli- 
gions. And what is true of these religions is in a greater 
or less degree true of everything else in ancient and modern 
history. Thus you and I still speak habitually of the sun 
rising and setting, and during nine hundred and ninety- 
nine moments out of a thousand the earth beneath us is 
unreflectively regarded as the motionless bottom of the 
universe. In other words, the culture of any age or land 
is not one thing, rather it is a multitude or vast collection 
of habits, among which some may be new but others are 
older and some may be even prehistoric. As the culture 
changes only part of the collection of habits is altered. 
That is, new habits are added and only some of the older 
habits die out in competition with the new ones; whereas 



THE RECENCY OF CIVILIZATION 11 

others that do not compete at all or only feebly, sur- 
vive. 

5. Conclusion. — This recency of rapidly developing 
civilization compared with the length of man's prehistoric 
period and these truths regarding the origin and growth 
of civilization are most significant. On the one hand, they 
suggest that civilization may still be but an infant and 
therefore that man may yet be far from the best 
solution of life's problems. On the other hand, they show 
with what exceeding difficulty man discovered the first 
tools and methods for subduing nature and outgrew the 
customs and beliefs that in each generation he acquired 
from the social group to which he belonged. Indeed, the 
fact that change and progress have been so difficult sug- 
gests that the greatest dangers and obstacles to progress 
man faces in all ages are conservatism rather than radical- 
ism, inertia rather than perseverance, group restraint 
rather than individual initiative, and the ready acceptance 
of the old and customary rather than investigation and 
invention. 

For further study read: 

Boas, F., The Mind of Primitive Man, 1911, Chaps. I-IV; 

Thorndike, E. L., Educational Psychology, 1913, Vol. Ill, 
Chap. X; 

Ratzel, The History of Mankind, Book I. 
For more extensive study read: 

Thomas, W. I., Source Book for Social Origins, 1909. 



CHAPTER II 

THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 

1. The history of the growth of knowledge. — As stated 
in the preceding chapter, a civilization, or culture, is an 
exceeding complex group of more or less closely inter- 
connected social habits, or customs, within which group 
are an indefinite number of minor, or subordinate, groups. 
Corresponding to these minor groups the study of the 
history of any great civilization can be divided into an 
indefinite number of possible subdivisions. For example, 
the study of the history of Roman civilization includes 
within it the study of the history of many minor groups 
of customs such as that of the Roman law or the Roman 
military art, and finally the study of the history of in- 
dividual customs such as that of the Roman triumphal 
arch or that of the Roman imperium. 

Within the history of western civilization we are to 
study in this book one such subordinate group of customs, 
that is, we are to study the history of those habits, or 
customs which we call European intellectual life. From 
the preceding chapter there follow at once regarding this 
subject of study, the intellectual life of Europe, that it 
has evolved and that in it are to be found all the major 
characteristics of evolving civilization. During the 
thousands of years of European history, our insight, our 
beliefs and our other habits of thought have undergone 
vast changes corresponding usually to the vast changes 
in our civilization. Each later stage of intellectual life 
has evolved out of the preceding stage of culture, and 

12 



THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 13 

in each later period many of the intellectual habits of 
earlier periods have survived. Hence, precisely as our 
European civilization evolved out of the primitive cul- 
ture of prehistory, so also did our European intellectual 
life and in particular our science; and, precisely as we 
Europeans have ever remained primitive in some of our 
customs, so have we remained primitive in some of our 
beliefs and other habits of thought; and lastly, precisely 
as different strata of our population exhibit customs of 
unlike antiquity, so do these strata exhibit also beliefs 
and manners of thought of unequally remote origin. 
Let me illustrate each of these points: The wonderful 
development of Greek thought during the height of Greek 
civilization and the marvellous progress of the various 
sciences in western Europe during the past three hundred 
years are evidently instances of vast evolution in intel- 
lectual life. The history of English civil law is an instance 
of later intellectual habits evolving out of the customs of 
earlier periods and also of the tenacity with which some 
intellectual customs can survive for ages. The wide- 
spread belief among cultured peoples in man's immor- 
tality is one instance of the survival of an extremely 
ancient belief, and so is also the belief that one can do 
acts of kindness for the dead. Finally, the widespread 
belief in ghosts, magic, clairvoyance, and magical cures 
among the ignorant and isolated strata of European and 
American peoples and the absence of this belief among 
the highly cultured strata of these peoples illustrate the 
fact that different strata exhibit beliefs of unlike antiq- 
uity. 1 

1 To this brief introductory statement of our subject of study, 
the growth of European intellectual life, should be appended the 
important truth that a man's intellect is not one thing but a group 
of thousands upon thousands of elementary and largely independent 
habits, none the less independent though often variously organized 




14 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

2. The meaning of the term, philosophy. — Interesting 
as is the entire story of the growth of European thought, 
we must confine our study to one part of that story, the 
history of European philosophical thought. What is 
philosophy, or philosophical thought? In the first place, 
philosophy is an aspect of all belief or thought from that of 
a savage or child to that of a Sir Isaac Newton. Hence 
each normal human being is a philosopher and therefore 
philosophy is something out of doors and not merely 
something in libraries and in the minds of extraordinary 
men. You, the reader, have a philosophy as truly as you 
into complex habits. As a result, some of a man's beliefs can be 
primitive and others modern, and some of his beliefs can change 
radically while others remain fixed. He can be even the greatest 
living scientist and yet a savage in some of his convictions. In short, 
the intellect even of the modern cultured man is like an historical 
museum; for it contains relics of every age in his line of intellectual 
descent, all resting quietly side by side in their cases, the neural arches 
of his nervous system. Though logically some of these exhibits (i. c, 
habits) are in utter conflict, psychologically they often remain peace- 
fully side by side where training has placed them. Moreover, when 
one is added or one is taken away from the collection the others or 
the vast majority of the others can remain undisturbed. Here as 
in other matters what is true of the individual is often true also of 
he social group, for the social intellect too changes by mere addition 
^nd subtraction as well as by reorganization and disorganization of 
cSstomary beliefs. For example, though all our elementary schools 
for generations have taught us that the earth revolves on its axis 
daily, a^id that the earth and other planets move in orbits about the 
sun, still many continue to locate God up in heaven. Though a 
large percentage of men in cultured lands have been taught to re- 
gard medicine ^a science and a technical art, still it is necessary for 
the physician "ikmspire confidence in us" by his appearance and 
manner. To this eltent he is still a " medicine man." Though most 
of the events in nature are explained by us as naturalistic and de- 
terministic, the acts of man's will are still for the most of us super- 
natural and indeterminate. Though we are well aware that kings 
are ordinary mortals, even the king of democratic England is still a 
sacred person. Though our morals have become in part strictly 
utilitarian, how many trivial sins remain heinous! 



THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 15 

have a coat or a knife; and this philosophy of yours has a 
long history reaching back into the days before civilization 
began as truly as have your clothing and your tools a 
story reaching back before the days when men began to 
work metals and to weave baskets and cloth. In the sec- 
ond place, as all beliefs and thoughts are usually social 
habits, so also is philosophy a social habit. Precisely as we 
speak of an eighteenth century custom of dress, so also 
may we speak of eighteenth century philosophical thought; 
and precisely as we use the expression, English law, so 
also may we use the expression, English philosophy. In 
short, philosophy is the name of certain customs; and every 
normal man, civilized or savage, possesses one or another 
of these groups of habits and for the greater part he pos- 
sesses them in common with his people, class or set. 

But what marks such a habit, that is, such a belief or 
manner of thought as philosophical? To answer this 
question either definitely or clearly is difficult. A philo- 
sophical belief or manner of thought differs from any other 
by bein g logically gen eral and the more general it is the 
more genuinely philosophical is the habit. Again a belief 
is philosophical provided it is logically fundamental in a 
man's thinking. For example, the present widespread 
belief that every event has a cause and that this cause is 
always of such a character that it can be discovered and 
verified by employing the methods of scientific research, is 
a philosophical habit of thought, a habit actually control- 
ling the behavior of men in founding the research labora- 
tories of the many types which now exist. This habit of 
scientifically investigating everything that is of any in- 
terest or importance to mankind is relatively new in 
the history of civilization. It did not exist in the middle 
ages and has since come only step by step. One name for 
it is naturalism. Now naturalism is a highly general 
doctrine, for it is applied to almost everything intellectual 



16 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

in which cultured men are interested. Moreover, it is 
logically fundamental; that is to say, if it is not true 
thousands of beliefs which we regard as virtually certain 
are false. It is therefore philosophical. 

The definition of philosophy is so important that it 
justifies the mentioning of several other examples of philo- 
sophical custom. The change in the astronomical belief 
during the sixteenth century from the geocentric to the 
heliocentric hypothesis was philosophical; for the older 
belief was logically indispensable to the general conception 
of the universe entertained throughout the middle ages 
and the ancient world. The rise of the belief, usually 
called the conservation of energy, was an important event 
in the history of philosophic thought because this doctrine 
is fundamental to all natural sciences and their application. 
Again, those principles underlying the French revolution, 
called the Rights of Man, may properly be called philo- 
sophical; so also may the religious belief in a universal di- 
vine providence. In artistic criticism the difference be- 
tween those who emphasize structure or form and those 
who minimize this, emphasizing on the contrary color or 
content may properly be called philosophical. Indeed, I 
see no reason why such a difference in art as that between 
the Greek and the Gothic should not also be called philo- 
sophical. In short, whatever is highly general or logically 
fundamental or nearly fundamental in man's thoughts, 
in any period or in any land, is philosophical, however 
indefinite the limits between such thought and that whfbh 
we do not call philosophical must remain. 

3. Philosophical growth and its causes. — The student 
of the evolution of civilization will expect to find exempli- 
fied in the history of philosophical thought the same 
general features of evolution that we have already out- 
lined. To him it is a matter of course that modern philo- 
sophical thought has developed from the intellectual life 



THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 17 

of earlier times and ultimately from primitive belief and 
thought; also that much of the ancient and even primitive 
has survived, especially among the isolated peoples and the 
ignorant classes. Indeed, he would expect to find that the 
inertia of philosophical thought is especially great; because 
such thought is logically general and fundamental, and 
many customs have to change before a philosophical 
growth has been completed. Therefore any marked 
change in philosophical thought deserves the name revo- 
lution. For example, it has taken centuries of the bitterest 
struggle against individual and group inertia to change 
the philosophical thought of medieval Europe into that 
of Europe of the twentieth century; and the process has 
by no means even yet reached an equilibrium, as the 
continued growth of democracy and of naturalism bears 
witness. 

We may now ask the most important question a student 
of the history of philosophy can raise: What causes philo- 
sophical change and who discovers or invents the new 
philosophy? Evidently, it follows from what has been said 
in this book thus far that there are few places where 
the individual man is less able to change himself and his 
fellows than in their philosophy. Then too^hilosophy is 
pre-eminently a group phenomenon, and%roups are usually 
inert. Indeed, few changes in civilization are the work of 
only one man even though the part some one man has 
played is indispensable; and how much fewer must such 
changes be when they are revolutionary group changes! 
Hence we may regard the causes which bring about 
marked philosophical growth among a people or class as 
many, widespread and various. In the first place, every 
cause that affects the general civilization, be the cause 
political, social, economic, industrial, religious or intel- 
lectual can lead to profound changes in at least some of the 
intellectual habits either of the community or of some 



18 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

classes within the community. Thus the multitudinous 
causes that brought into existence modern Europe were 
also the causes that in great part transformed Europe 
intellectually. Such were the growth of cities with their 
industry, wealth and trade, the widening of the geographi- 
cal horizon to include the entire earth, the increasing 
political solidarity and centralization of government and 
the decay of feudalism. In the second place, great practi- 
cal inventions and great scientific discoveries can lead to 
profound changes in philosophy. To discover ways and 
means to make the supply of food surer, to conquer dis- 
ease, and in general to increase the power of man over 
his fortune is to change his attitude toward the world 
about and above him; for to do so is to remove the mys- 
tery, uncertainty and magic which seem to primitive 
peoples to surround them and to hold them in arbitrary 
and irresistible control. Likewise, to discover important 
facts and to explain familiar facts in new ways are pre- 
eminently to cause philosophical change. The astronomi- 
cal, physical and biological discoveries made during the 
past four hundred years have revolutionized our concep- 
tion of nature and of man's place in nature. Verily we 
live intellectually in a different universe from that in which 
our fathers lived five centuries ago! 

If such are the causes of philosophical growth, who are 
the great philosophical discoverers? Evidently, the great 
leaders in every walk of life during such periods of progress 
and especially the great scientific discoverers and the great 
thinkers. Of the latter class such men as Galilei, Harvey, 
Newton, Lyell and Darwin literal^ disclosed to the eyes 
of modern Europe a hidden universe. So did the great 
classical scholars and artists of the Italian Renascence. 
So did the great jurists. So did the great political leaders 
of the modern democratic movements. So did the great 
explorers of the fifteenth century. And so did the great 



THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 19 

inventors of modern machinery, of modern medicine, and 
of modern commerce and banking. But in particular it 
is true that the discoverers of important facts and the men 
who first succeed in rightly explaining facts are pre- 
eminently the men that deserve to be called the authors 
of philosophy. 

4. The program of this book. — Having now surveyed 
the field which forms the subject-matter of our study we 
can very briefly outline the program of this book. The 
general subject being the history of Western philosophic 
thought, we shall give a very brief account of the changes 
in man's mental nature wrought by civilization and of the 
primitive thought out of which Western thought has de- 
veloped, and then we shall trace the development of philo- 
sophic thought within civilization from the thought of the 
Greeks to that of modern Western Europe and the coun- 
tries most closely allied to Europe in culture. The subject 
of the next chapter will be the changes wrought in man's 
mental nature by civilization. 

For more extensive study read: 

Sidgwick, H., Philosophy, Its Scope and Relations, 1902. 



CHAPTER III 

CHANGES IN MAN'S MENTAL NATURE WROUGHT BY 
CIVILIZATION 

1. Introductory. — We have now answered in most gen- 
eral terms the question : What are the factors which create 
civilization and science? Let us next endeavor to answer 
a second and related question: In what general or typical 
respects does the highly civilized and intellectual man 
differ mentally from the savage, the barbarian, and the 
uncultured? * What general and typical changes take 
place in man's learned, or acquired mental nature as he 
becomes more and more civilized? 2 These changes in 
man's acquired mental nature can all be roughly sug- 
gested by saying that the savage stands between the 
highest brutes and the highest men, or that he is mentally 
more brutal than is the civilized. Hence, in the chief 
respects in which human mental nature differs from that 
of the highest brutes, we shall find the answer to our 
question. These differences are at least six in number. 

(a) Man differs from the brute in his capacities to learn. 

(b) He differs from the brute in being instinctively more 
curious and in his playful love of thinking for its own sake. 

(c) He differs from the brute in his capacity to learn to 
react to the elementary and abstract features and relations 

1 As we have seen, there is little reason to believe that we differ 
in inborn nature from our barbaric ancestors of four thousand years 
ago. Hence throughout this chapter we are dealing only with man's 
learned, or acquired mental nature. 

2 Evidently this question is directed to the historian and to the 
psychologist in common. 

20 



CHANGES IN MAN'S MENTAL NATURE 21 

of the total situations to which he has been responding. 
(d) He is less crudely emotional than is the brute, (e) He 
is to a less extent the creature of the moment, that is, he 
is less suggestible. (/) He is more social, that is, he is more 
interested in the behavior of his fellows and his responses 
are more liable to be controlled by their behavior and wel- 
fare. 

2. Learning by imitation. — That brutes ever learn 
from perceiving the conduct of other members of their 
species is highly doubtful. It is certain that the child does 
so frequently. For example, we can show the child or the 
man how to ring a bell, lift a latch, open a box; whereas 
it is doubtful that the monkey for whom among brutes 
such tricks are easiest can learn them by imitation. Though 
a monkey, an elephant, or a dog may learn such tricks 
easily, he does so by what is called the trial and chance 
success (or trial and error) method, that is, by hitting upon 
the trick the first few times quite accidentally and, if re- 
warded, by doing it again and again until the habit is well 
established. Finally, man can learn rationally, or through 
thinking out the way and means or by having the way and 
means explained to him. This we have every reason to 
believe is quite beyond the brute. 1 

Though the savage child has the inborn capacities to 
acquire these higher ways of learning, his environment 

1 Both of these human methods, it is true, presuppose considerable 
education of the trial and success sort in infancy and childhood, and 
can probably be reduced to this method of learning. The child that 
can open a box by imitation has already learned by the primitive 
method to manipulate many similar things and is strictly speaking 
not imitating but using habits already formed. In short, the higher 
methods, imitation and reasoning have grown out of the trial and 
success method by continuous stages. But even so, the child's 
docility is, to an extraordinary extent, superior to that of the most 
intelligent brute precisely in this marked capacity to acquire higher 
methods of learning. 



22 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

does not educate him in these traits to any such extent as 
civilized environment with its work-shops and schools 
educates the child of modern Europe. Further, a similar 
truth holds of the successive stages through which civilized 
man has risen from prehistoric barbarism and ultimately 
from savagedom. In other words, the lower down we go 
in civilization the cruder become the ways in which learning 
takes place. At one extreme stands the crude trial and 
success method of the brute and at the other extreme the 
methods and technique of modern scientific research, 
exposition, and demonstration. 

3. The broadening of curiosity. — The second human 
trait, man's instinctive curiosity, is known to everyone 
familiar with young children. The eagerness with which 
they watch moving objects and persons about them, 
inspect objects, and manipulate everything upon which 
they can lay hands, and also the ceaseless questioning of 
the older child, illustrate this manifold curiosity. Here 
too environment has made a great difference in the traits 
resulting from the same inborn nature. In the civilized en- 
vironment are innumerable and ever-varying objects that 
attract the child's attention, and ever-present encourage- 
ment to attend and reward for attending. Later, the 
school and, later still, the professional environment lead 
him to acquire interests far removed from his original 
tendencies to be curious. The result is that the highly 
cultured modern has a wealth of interests in problems, 
in things, and in events, to which the savage is as blind as 
are man's domestic animals. 

In this mental characteristic also the history of civili- 
zation reveals the gradual ascent from the traits of the 
savage to the traits of the highly intellectual and cultured 
modern. Little by little the civilized man has acquired 
new and additional interests until his interests have be- 
come numberless and world-wide, until the world to which 



CHANGES IN MAN'S MENTAL NATURE 23 

he responds is infinitely more complex than is the world 
of his savage ancestor. 

4. Increase of the ability to analyze. — The third trait, 
man's ability to analyze, is pre-eminently human; indeed 
even the average man, not to mention the very stupid man, 
is narrowly limited in the extent to which he can become 
interested in the abstract and general and respond to them 
successfully. The brutes seem able to react only to total 
situations and sensible qualities, and never to the abstract 
or general aspects of these situations, to their elements, 
or especially to the relations holding between these ele- 
ments. In contrast to the brute and the imbecile, the 
average child learns, and learns easily, to react to the shape 
of an object, to its squareness, its roundness, or its triangu- 
larity. He learns to react to the length and the breadth of 
objects, to their number, their age, their ownership, their 
value, and to many other general or abstract properties. 
However, as we raise the degree of generality and abstract- 
ness, mental tests show that we are passing beyond the 
intelligence of the average child; and finally when we test 
men's ability to apprehend such relations as are studied 
in advanced courses in logic, mathematics and other 
sciences, we find that we are passing beyond the intelli- 
gence of all men but the exceptionally intellectual. From 
all of this we can infer that to the ability of the brute to 
react to total situations and to the sensible qualities of 
things, man has in the course of his evolution from the 
brute acquired the further capacity of splitting up these 
total situations into their elements and of reacting to these 
elements and especially to their relations. Indeed, pre- 
cisely this capacity is what we mean by the word, 
intellect. 

In turn, civilized environment has proved to be a power- 
ful agent for developing these higher capacities of man, 
when they exist in the child, into the intellectual habits 



24 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

of the adult; whereas the savage environment has not so 
proved, for it keeps man blind to those abstract elements, 
those general aspects, and those hidden relations of things 
which to the modern European seem unavoidably notice- 
able. And the history of civilization here too repeats its 
story of man's advance by stages from savagedom. To 
discover the general and abstract and to notice the obscure 
relations between entities have been slow and difficult 
tasks. A few steps have sometimes required even cen- 
turies. However, little by little under the leadership of 
men of genius, highly cultured mankind has come in time 
to respond to the multitudinous entities studied in the 
abstract and general sciences of our modern world. 

5. Man becomes less crudely emotional. — Psychol- 
ogists tell us that the cruder emotions are made up of gross 
and blind responses and that their peculiar field of sensory 
experience is one where analysis and knowledge have never 
made much progress. In other words, the cruder emotions 
are especially symptoms of a lack of definite learned ways 
of reacting to the given situation. To illustrate these 
points : Compare the utter blindness of an experience made 
up solely of such sensations as those of hunger, satiety, 
pain, comfort, and drowsiness, with the information we owe 
to our external senses, especially to our eyes, ears, and 
cutaneous and kinesthetic sense organs. Again, compare 
the reactions of a panic-stricken man or child, for example, 
a child being stung by a wasp, with the thrusts and parries 
of two expert contestants in a fencing duel. As man has 
evolved from the brute and in turn from the savage, a 
tendency has arisen to eliminate the crude emotions of the 
brute and of the child and to substitute for them less 
crude emotional responses and especially skillful responses. 
That is to say, the tendency has developed to eliminate 
the blind and crude reactions of anger, joy, fear, and simi- 
lar types of response, and to acquire in their place the defi- 



CHANGES IN MAN'S MENTAL NATURE 25 

nite and precise reactions of the thoughtful, the learned 
and the skillful. 

Though this transformation is never complete even in 
the most cultured; the man or woman remaining crudely 
emotional in highly civilized communities is regarded as 
either sick or mentally deficient, as insane or criminal, as 
superstitious or grossly undisciplined. Where cultured 
man has remained emotional there has often arisen in the 
place of the savage emotions critical insights and types 
of feeling which may be called in the broadest sense of the 
word esthetic. Good taste tends to restrain and to select 
wherever and whenever emotions arise; and crude appe- 
tites, crude enjoyments, crude fears, crude griefs, and crude 
ragings tend to be condemned and inhibited. 

6. Man becomes less crudely suggestible. — Another 
prominent difference between the mind of the brute and 
that of man and between the mind of the savage and that 
of the civilized is the decreasing suggestibility of the higher 
mind. The child and the savage are markedly creatures 
of the sensations of the moment Restrained impulses, long 
sustained work, consistent plans, consideration of to- 
morrow's welfare, careful scrutiny of beliefs are seldom 
among their virtues. Only the highly trained and dis- 
ciplined mind can consider and keep considering the wel- 
fare of a lifetime and of future generations, or the many 
elements that enter into most problems and their solutions. 
Suggestibility is then merely a name for the absence of 
such restraint in thought and other types of behavior. 1 
To illustrate: At one extreme (suggestibility) we might 

1 This restraint is acquired through two mental or neural processes, 
facilitation and inhibition. Through association or acquired con- 
nections many mental or neural factors determine positively (or 
facilitate) our thought and conduct, and they prevent (or inhibit) 
other thoughts or sensations being our sole master. That is, the 
presence or absence of such acquired connections, or again the vig- 
orous functioning or the lethargy of these connections, when present, 



26 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

cite instances of conduct all the way from being influenced 
in our purchases by some clever advertisement we have 
read, to the slavish obedience of the patient in deep hypno- 
sis or to the blind impulse of a panic-stricken mob. At 
the other extreme (restraint) we might cite instances of 
conduct all the way from the child hesitating, because of 
past sad experiences, before again robbing the pantry, 
to the justices of the supreme court deliberating individu- 
ally and as a body for months before rendering an impor- 
tant decision. In short, as man becomes more civilized, 
more factors or conditions determine his thought and his 
ordinary conduct. Both become restrained. The many 
interests of life, the many aspects of each situation as it is 
faced, the many similar experiences in days gone by, 
the many deeds and sayings of other men, all these play 
a part in facilitating and inhibiting and thereby in con- 
trolling judgments and other behavior. 

One type of suggestibility is especially characteristic 
of savages and barbarians, that is, the complete dominance, 
even tyranny of custom. Indeed, it is only gradually and 
only in advanced civilization that the individual becomes 
free at all to think and to judge for himself and to disobey 
mere convention; but even in the most advanced civiliza- 
tions this freedom is sometimes narrowly limited and al- 
ways somewhat limited. Thus even where you and I are 
legally and socially free to think and to do as we will, we 
are still in many matters the creatures of the group mind. 
We are so even where we try not to be so; for no man has 
succeeded in throwing off altogether the habits acquired 
in the school and in the social environment, even when con- 
vinced that he should do so. Here most radically minded 

determine respectively whether we are genuinely deliberative or 
the mere creatures of impulses. In a sentence, our freedom from 
suggestion or hypnosis depends upon the complexity or degree of 
integration of our habits. 



CHANGES IN MAN'S MENTAL NATURE 27 

men are self -deceived. They try " to begin all over again ;" 
but a later generation studying their lives sees what they 
themselves could not see, that they were children of their 
age and nation. Even men who in their day were bitter 
enemies and thought themselves poles asunder, seem to the 
historian of their period markedly alike. For example, 
the pagan philosopher of Greece and Rome and the con- 
temporary Christian bishop seem to the student of the 
history of thought remarkably alike and far more alike 
than either is like any modern man, Christian or infidel. 
In short, even the most radical man frees himself only 
here and there from the group mind. However, there has 
come to be a marked difference between the barbarian and 
the civilized. The thoughtful and learned man tries to 
free himself, and democratic society tries in part at least 
to permit him to be free. As civilization advances both 
succeed to a greater extent. 

Hence the history of individual freedom is one of the 
most interesting and important chapters in the history of 
civilization; and the struggle for freedom has been one of 
the bitterest wars that man has had to wage, a war not yet 
fought to a finish. Under primitive conditions not only 
the authority of custom is absolute but the obedience to 
custom is utterly blind. What later become matters of 
free reflective thought, the morals, the religious customs 
and beliefs, the civil and social customs, the political 
institutions, the education of children, and the study of 
man and of the world about him are for the most part in 
primitive society matters of blind social tradition, matters 
settled entirely by the group mind. 

We may then conclude : To obey custom is always easier 
than to invent new and better methods. For the stupid 
and ignorant it is impossible to do more than to obey 
custom; but for some men in the community to become 
critical of and rebellious toward blind customs is dis- 



28 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

tinctly a sign of growing civilization. As civilization 
advances the field of criticism and the freedom of criticism 
keep extending. Hence we may add as a further change 
in mental trait coming with civilization the growing free- 
dom from custom and the corresponding increase in critical 
mindedness, the gradual throwing off of the herd behavior 
of primitive folk. 

7. Man becomes more sociable. — Finally our list of 
the changes wrought by civilization in man's acquired men- 
tal nature includes increasing socialization. The child is 
in some respects markedly social, but is also blindly cruel 
and selfish; and the stupid child is more liable to remain 
so than is the intellectually gifted child. As we grow to 
adulthood we learn to adjust ourselves to others' feelings, 
interests and welfare as well as to our own; we learn to 
co-operate with others, to adopt the customs and etiquette 
of companions, to be reliable in promises, and to have 
many common ideals and enterprises. So also in the course 
of man's history, with increasing civilization we find as 
both cause and effect increasing socialization. Hordes 
become tribes, tribes nations, and nations empires. States 
originally held together and in order only by the strong 
arm become constitutional and law-abiding democracies. 
Slavery and serfdom give place to universal citizenship. 
Privilege and greed tend to be replaced by habits of patriot- 
ism and humanitarianism. 

8. Conclusion. — Let us, to sum up, repeat our list of 
prominent changes wrought by civilized environment in 
man's acquired mental nature, (a) Man acquires higher 
ways of learning beyond the crude trial and success method 
of the brute. (6) Curious and loving to think, he in time 
consciously adopts as his enterprise the work of the in- 
tellect, (c) Analyzing further and further the world to 
which he responds, his conduct is governed more and more 
by the general and the abstract and less and less by crude 



CHANGES IN MAN'S MENTAL NATURE 29 

unanalyzed totals, (d) As he thus becomes more skillful 
and intellectual he becomes less crudely emotional, (e) 
Likewise he becomes less suggestible, that is, more thought- 
ful, more consistent, and farther sighted. (/) Finally, he 
becomes more and more socialized. 1 These changes 
wrought in general by civilization, are wrought within the 
civilized community to a yet greater extent by what we 
call culture and higher education. In general, as the sav- 
age stands between the brute and the civilized man; so 
the stupid, the ignorant, and the uncultured stand be- 
tween the savage and the highly cultured man. Similarly, 
within the historical development of the highly civilized 
nations, increasing civilization and in particular increasing 
scientific knowledge have tended to bring about precisely 
these typical changes in the mental nature of the people, 
or at least of the highly intellectual individuals among the 
people. Thus wherever science has come and has advanced, 
man has risen farthest above a purely barbaric civiliza- 
tion; and if man in Western Europe to-day exhibits on the 
whole these six improvements in mental nature more than 
man ever has in his preceding history, this fact may be 
ascribed in part at least to the marvellous advance in scien- 
tific knowledge made in the past three centuries. 

For further study read: 

Thorndike, E. L., Animal Intelligence, 1911, 282-294; 

Dewey and Tufts, Ethics, 1909, 17-90; 

Bury, J. B., A History of Freedom of Thought, 1913, 7-21; 

1 Of course any such list of general changes is really only a vague 
statement of thousands upon thousands of particular specific changes. 
Moreover, the possibilities of combination or variation within such 
an enormous number are countless, which statement in turn suggests 
the important truth that the rate of progress in these mental changes 
may vary markedly from one particular trait to another. As indi- 
viduals differ, so do peoples differ. Some individuals and some 
nations may be advanced in some traits and be behind in others, or 
hold to some traits and lose others. 



30 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

Thomas, W. I., Source Book for Social Origins, 1909, 143- 
212, 335-439; 

Sidis, B., The Psychology of Suggestion, 1898, 297-342. 
For more extensive study read: 

Thorndike, E. L., The Original Nature of Man, 1913; 

McDougall, W., Social Psychology, 1908; 

Thorndike, E. L., Animal Intelligence; 

Sidis, B., The Psychology of Suggestion; 

Tarde, G. (transl. Parsons), The Laws of Imitation, 1903; 

Ross, E. A., Social Psychology, 1915; 

Hobhouse, L. T., Mind in Evolution, 1901; 

Giddings, F. H., Elements of Sociology, 1898; 

Ward, L. F., The Psychic Factors of Civilization, 1893; 

Brinton, D. G., The Basis of Social Relations, 1902; 

Schultze, F., Psychologie der Naturvolker, 1900; 

Stoll, O., Suggestion und Hypnotismus in der Volkerpsy- 
chologie, 1904; 

Robinson, J., Psychologie der Naturvolker, 1896; 

Mason, O. T., Origins of Invention, 1895; 

Keane, A. H., Ethnology, 1901; Man, Past and Present, 
1899; 

Morgan, L. H., Ancient Society; 

Ratzel, The History of Mankind, Bk. I; 

Sutherland, A., The Origin and Growth of the Moral In- 
stinct, 1898; 

Westermarck, E., The Origin and Development of the 
Moral Ideas, 1906; 

Hobhouse, L. T., Morals in Evolution, 1914; 

Bury, J. B., A History of Freedom of Thought. 



s\ 



CHAPTER IV 

PEIMITIVE KNOWLEDGE AND THOUGHT 

1. Primitive thought. — Man had an implicit philosophy- 
long before he had science. That is, before science he had 
a philosophy provided we mean by the word philosophy 
not an explicit doctrine but a general intellectual attitude 
or way of approaching and solving problems. Let us call 
this early stage of thought before science, primitive thought, 
and let us call its philosophy, the philosophy of primitive 
thought. 

The expression " primitive thought" when thus defined 
remains ambiguous, for it may mean three distinct classes 
of belief. First, it may mean a stage in a people's history 
preceding all scientific thought. Second, it may mean a 
stratum of every nation's intellectual life, the beliefs of 
the stupid and of the ignorant who have remained intel- 
lectually primitive while part of the population has be- 
come cultured and critically minded. Third, it may mean 
prescientific beliefs held even by learned and thoughtful 
men. As preceding .chapters have told us, there are so 
many things in this world for man to think about, and the 
thinking which he does depends so largely upon environ- 
mental stimuli; that part of a nation's population can 
advance in culture though the remainder does not, and an 
individual, or a people, or even an age can advance de- 
cidedly in thought regarding some matters though remain- 
ing markedly primitive in thought regarding other matters. 
For example, a proficient physicist can be utterly igno- 
rant of political and economic science, a clever business 

31 



32 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

man can be foolishly superstitious, an age of great astro- 
nomical, physical, and geographical discoveries can be 
most primitive in its treatment of the criminal, the pauper, 
and the insane, or an age can be intensely interested and 
keen in its theological speculations but primitive in its 
beliefs regarding the physical environment and regarding 
the nature and causes of disease. In short, no man and no 
age is completely free from primitive thought. 

Nevertheless, the name " primitive thought' ' is ascribed 
most frequently to the beliefs and customs of certain epochs 
in the history of civilization and to the beliefs and customs 
of the people of certain lands which have remained savage 
or barbaric throughout history. For example, three 
thousand years ago primitive thought prevailed every- 
where. In the middle ages of Western Europe the his- 
torian finds an immense amount of belief and custom that 
should be called primitive. In central Africa the thought 
has remained primitive to our own day. Let us adopt 
this use of the term, primitive thought; but let us in so 
doing not forget that in studying primitive thought we 
are studying not only an ancient epoch, an epoch before 
science and in the early stages of civilization, but also an 
epoch many of whose beliefs and customs have obtained 
always and everywhere among the peoples of the earth, 
and whose beliefs therefore can be and should be illustrated 
by examples taken from every age and clime. 

2. Three kinds of beliefs held by the primitive thinker. 
— In the life of every man, and so in the life of primitive 
man, three stages or levels of knowledge are to be found. 
The first stage is blind or unreflective knowing. Unreflec- 
tive are those acts which we do merely because our inborn, 
or instinctive nature makes us sensitive to certain things 
and gives us ways of reacting to these things. For example, 
it is chiefly because of inborn nature that we are seekers 
after food, and fighters; that we fear darkness, solitude, 



PRIMITIVE KNOWLEDGE AND THOUGHT 33 

loud noises, and some animals; that we love and cherish 
the men with whom we spend our lives and that we fear 
or dislike the stranger. Unreflective is also what man 
learns merely by the trial and error, the hit and miss 
method, the method by which we learn to walk, to talk, 
to whistle, to grasp, to handle, and to throw. Finally, 
unreflective is what man does without foresight through 
imitating other men or by mere suggestion. Thus, in 
the course of his growth from childhood to manhood man 
tends to adopt blindly as his own habits the many beliefs 
and customs of his clan or tribe. In short, all such instinct- 
ive or blindly acquired traits constitute a distinctly unre- 
flective mental level, a level in which more numerous and 
often more complex acts are possible than are possible for 
the higher brutes, but a level that remains animal-like 
rather than critical and rational and peculiarly human. 

In contrast, the second level is genuinely reflective 
knowledge. Even the lowest savage does acquire some 
information toward which he is critically-minded and which 
he verifies. As a hunter and a fisherman, as a maker of 
tools and weapons, as a builder of huts and a kindler of 
fire, as an interested onlooker at the weather and seasons, 
the savage must learn and verify some of the properties, 
the effects, and the causes of those things to which he is 
obliged to react not only skillfully but also carefully and 
thoughtfully. 

Besides the first and second levels of knowledge there 
is a third level. Let me call it speculation, in contrast to 
man's verified knowledge. Even primitive man attends 
to and is curious about many things whose effects and 
causes are not perceived or readily guessed and whose 
explanation when guessed cannot be readily tested. 
Therefore when he happens to attend to things to which 
he has no blind and completely satisfactory way of react- 
ing or for which he cannot easily acquire a verifiable ex- 



34 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

planation, he may speculate, he may guess, and to some 
extent at least he may argue out hypotheses. For exam- 
ple, he may explain the storm as the raging of a god, or 
insanity as the entrance into a man of some evil spirit, or 
the power of an adversary as the result of magic. 1 

To cultured moderns, these guesses or hypotheses of 
the primitive thinker may seem often wild and childish; 
but each of them can be psychologically explained and 
presupposes the same inborn mental nature as that pos- 
sessed by the civilized man of to-day. In general, we can 
explain them by two mental laws, the law of analogy and 
the law of association. The law of analogy asserts that in 
reacting to a novel situation for which we have no well 
adapted (inborn or acquired) response, we react in a way 
which for our mental nature (inborn or acquired) happens 
to be most closely connected with that situation. Trite 
examples of such responses are the mistakes of the country- 
man visiting a city for the first time. At dinner he may 
drink out of the finger bowls. He may try to blow out the 
gas or electric light. 2 Granted this psychological law and 
granted the arising of some interest in things or events 
whose nature, causes or effects are not directly perceived 
or are not explained by traditional beliefs, we should 
expect men to explain these things or events in the way 
in which they explain whatever happens to be for them 
most analogous. The law of association asserts that what- 
ever we happen to think together or to attend to together 
becomes connected in our future thinking. In this way we 
learn names, vocabularies, multiplication tables and 

1 Of course most such beliefs belong under the first type, being 
socially and blindly inherited; and perhaps the most that any imagi- 
native primitive mind ever does, is to alter such beliefs or to extend 
them to new situations. 

2 Other examples are: savages believing the sails of a ship to be 
wings, or believing a locomotive to be a horse, or again, a city baby 
calling the first cow he sees, a dog. 



PRIMITIVE KNOWLEDGE AND THOUGHT 35 

poems; and in this way we learn the familiar properties of 
things. Granted that a man's mental nature at a given 
time is thus and so, it will often be none the less a psycho- 
logical accident that decides what he happens to associate. 
That is to say, it will depend upon his environment rather 
than upon his mind. Let us call such an association, 
an accidental association. As an example of this, our 
environment rather than our mental nature has caused us 
to call one man Doe and another Roe. Again we often 
associate two things merely because we happened to attend 
to them at the same time. The two things may be logi- 
cally, physically and psychologically unrelated or but 
remotely related and yet some striking experience may 
henceforth keep them closely related as objects of our 
thought. Many superstitions are examples of this truth. 
A valuable mirror was accidentally broken an hour before 
we met a serious misfortune, and our minds refuse after- 
ward to keep the two events dissociated. In short, these 
two laws, the law of analogy and the law of association 
will explain most of the novel thoughts of primitive and 
civilized man; and to these novel thoughts, we are 
obliged to trace the origin of primitive speculation. 

However, let us emphasize again the important point 
that most beliefs and customs are unreflective and that the 
pre-eminent factor explaining the beliefs and customs of all 
peoples is the social environment. In the main man believes 
unreflectively what his age and clan believe, he is interested 
in what interests his generation, he gets the intellectual 
set of his mind from his fellows. Hence it follows that in 
explaining any belief or custom of primitive peoples we 
must always emphasize the part played by social tradition. 
Whatever its origin may have been, even primitive specu- 
lation is seldom truly speculation but is largely group 
thought. It is seldom the free and critical thought of 
individuals. 



36 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

It may help us if we give each of these types of knowing 
a name. The unreflective type we may divide into (1) 
blind trial and error learning and (2) blind tradition. The 
two reflective types we may call respectively (3) experi- 
mental researchy or investigation and (4) speculation. And 
each of these types, we have seen, is to be found in primi- 
tive belief and knowledge. 

3. Primitive verified knowledge. — We have now seen 
that responses to any environmental situation when ex- 
amined as a knowledge of that situation may be divided 
into two types, the uncritical, or unreflective beliefs and 
the critical, or reflective beliefs; and again that these 
latter, the critical beliefs, may be divided into the experi- 
mental, or verified beliefs and the speculative, or unverified 
beliefs. Though the unreflective, or uncritical type of 
response is at the basis of all learning and discovery and 
of all tradition, this type is essentially primitive and non- 
scientific. Hence the true origin of science must be sought 
in the reflective or critical beliefs of primitive minds, and 
these we have seen are from the beginning of two types, 
the experimental and the speculative. Thus we may at 
once infer that the growth of these two types of knowledge 
is especially the subject-matter of the history of man's 
intellectual enterprise. 

Let us consider first primitive experimental or verified 
knowledge. One of the wonders of the world is the amount 
of verified information man had before science began. 
Before science began man was expert in making utensils 
and weapons of stone, bone, and wood, in manufacturing 
pottery, in tilling the ground, in weaving cloth, in mining 
and working metals, in building canoes, boats, and ships, 
in quarrying and dressing stone, and in erecting large 
buildings, forts, and bridges. He possessed considerable 
information that may be called empirical geometry, 
physics, chemistry, engineering, and medicine. This 



PRIMITIVE KNOWLEDGE AND THOUGHT 37 

immense amount of prescientific skill should teach us the 
important truth : the arts and crafts had to be far advanced 
before man could become a scientist. Indeed our psychologi- 
cal insight should convince us that science could never 
have arisen until a vast amount of empirical information 
aroused man's curiosity toward the abstract and hidden 
nature of the things and events with which he was ac- 
quainted, a truth illustrated in the intellectual growth and 
training of every child. 

This primitive verified knowledge is more than the in- 
dispensable condition of science. It is essentially the seed 
out of which science has developed. It is science in em- 
bryo. As such the refusal to call it science is somewhat 
arbitrary, for we are unable to point out any specific 
boundary between it and its later or scientific stage. Not 
altogether arbitrary, however, is our refusal to call it 
science; for science differs from it in being abstract and 
general. Science is essentially made up of universal 
propositions; whereas primitive verified knowledge is es- 
sentially particular and concrete. To employ a very im- 
portant illustration : we may use a lever skillfully but may 
not yet have discovered the general truths of the lever. 
Or we may invent the wheel and employ it on a cart 
without having discovered that the wheel is a lever and 
that its merits depend upon the properties of the lever. 
In short, the typical lever, the wheel, and the balance scale 
may all be known to us, but to the lever in the abstract 
and to its general properties we may be completely blind. 
But even if we decide that science is to be distinguished by 
its generality and abstractness, we have to admit that the 
stages from the particular and the concrete to the general 
and the abstract are continuous, so genuinely continuous 
that any specific boundary line seems arbitrary. None 
the less both convenience and convention justify our re- 
fusing to call primitive verified knowledge science. It is 



38 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

prescience. It is not sufficiently general and abstract to 
be science. It is not argumentative or ratiocinative. Its 
judgments are not explicitly generalizations, and its veri- 
fication is not explicitly proof or logical deduction. 

4. Primitive speculative knowledge. — As primitive 
verified knowledge is a parent of science so also is primitive 
speculative knowledge. Indeed, much of man's primitive 
speculation betrays the very essence of science; for it tends 
to be abstract and general, even though lacking the other 
essential trait of science, verification. Again, as abstract 
and general it comes nearer to being scientific in spirit 
than does the concrete verified knowledge"; for its motive 
is explicitly an endeavor to explain. Finally, no matter 
how childish, it has the merit of being the result of wonder 
and curiosity. For these three reasons primitive specula- 
tion deserves extended study by the student of man's 
intellectual history. 

Without attempting to define the terms rigorously and 
of course without assuming that the classes denoted by 
these terms are mutually exclusive, I shall for convenience 
sum up man's primitive unverified beliefs, whether unre- 
flective or speculative, under the three headings, magic, 
animism, and myth. 1 

1 The three terms are here used purposely in a vague, generic and 
non-technical sense. For example, under animism I wish to include 
animatism, supernaturalism (Marett) or dynamism (Leuba), and 
totemism. Under magic I include taboo, or negative magic, and 
fetishism. For a more detailed and technical discussion of various 
primitive beliefs and customs the student should consult the works 
recommended for further reading. Moreover, in this chapter we are 
studying not the beliefs and customs of any one people but rather 
the general tendencies found among many different peoples. Finally, 
primitive belief is group custom rather than belief, that is, it is nearly 
thoughtless. As a consequence, however sharply one can define types 
of customs, it remains doubtful if one can define sharply different 
beliefs without reading into them distinctions which belong to far 
more advanced thinking. In short, primitive thought is essentially 



PRIMITIVE KNOWLEDGE AND THOUGHT 39 

(a) Magic. — It is doubtful if magic, in the broad sense 
in which I wish to use the word, can be rigorously denned ; 
for I desire to include within this class an array of beliefs 
and customs varying in different lands and varying some- 
times widely one from another. These customs vary from 
the most childish superstitions to thoughtful and critical 
beliefs, and therefore from the most blind and casual as- 
sociations to beliefs which reveal a genuine theory under- 
lying them logically. Let me illustrate. On the one hand, 
a boy may carry a certain pebble in his pocket because of 
some vague feeling that it will bring him good luck, though 
he may not have or seek any ground whatever to explain 
how it can have this effect. On the other hand, we may 
find primitive medical beliefs and customs based upon 
explicit principles such as "like cures like," "strength can 
pass from the well and strong to the weak and sick." 

Magic seems always to have played a large part in 
human life as it still does even in civilized communities. 
There are the multitudinous taboos of the savage; but the 
civilized also have their numerous taboos, such as the 
popular feeling which, even in cities of wealth and culture, 
compels the hotel and apartment-house proprietors to 
avoid numbering any. suite "thirteen," or again such as 
the fear felt as we brag about good health. There are 
witchcraft and the arts of the magician from time im- 
memorial, and there are to-day the fortune teller, the 
clairvoyant, the professional mind-reader, the charlatan, 
and the medically expert grandmother whose opinions 
rule though they conflict with explicit orders of the family 
physician. There are the wonder-working foods, drugs, 
images, lamps, and other natural and artificial objects of 
ancient life made familiar to us in the fairy stories so dearly 

social, childlike and non-technical. Hence in discussing primitive 
thought some advantage is to be got by using a few generic terms 
rather than several specific and more precise notions. 



40 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

loved in childhood, and we have with us still in our metro- 
politan cities wonder-working relics, marvellous patent 
medicines and foods, and a host of minor superstitions 
such as throwing rice at the departing bride and giving 
the playing cards an extra cut for good luck. 

Does any thought or principle underlie such beliefs and 
customs? " Often none whatsoever," must be our answer 
if this question asks regarding the origin of magic and the 
psychological factors at work therein. However, the ex- 
tensive belief and practice of magic probably did now and 
then tend to awaken in the minds of primitive and barbaric 
peoples a general belief even though a vague belief, which 
we may call "the principle implicit in magic." This prin- 
ciple is a theory of causation. It asserts that things can 
have a more or less hidden power, or efficacy which we 
moderns would call non-mechanical. Perhaps this can be 
illustrated best by the feelings ignorant people to-day 
have toward magnets, wireless telegraphy, dynamite, 
poisonous drugs, hypnotism, "personal magnetism," "will 
power," and similar instances of mysterious causal proc- 
esses. This belief in hidden powers, or efficacies has 
from prehistoric days to our own been a part of popular 
philosophy and indeed has only in recent centuries been 
disappearing even from scientific thought. 

Scholars are by no means agreed as to the origin of 
magic. Though many environmental agents may have 
been the actual stimuli to arouse such beliefs, the psycho- 
logical aptitude of man for these beliefs is apparent in 
every child and in every ignorant adult. The absence of 
beliefs that in the cultured inhibit such superstitions leaves 
man's inborn nature open to the crudest and most acci- 
dental associations and analogies and open also to the 
suggestions of the group mind. And our inborn mental 
nature is itself especially susceptible to such beliefs, with 
its many instinctive fears, with its desires to lord it over 



PRIMITIVE KNOWLEDGE AND THOUGHT 41 

others, with its submissiveness to the impressive stranger, 
with its sexual instincts, and with its varied emotional 
responses. 1 

(b) Animism. — The second type of primitive specula- 
tive knowledge is animism. To most primitive thinkers 
almost everything seems to be alive and to many primitive 
thinkers almost everything seems to have a soul. In the 
latter case having a soul makes them alive. But in be- 
lieving things to be alive the primitive thinker has not 
the critical and precise notion of life which the modern 
biologist entertains. To be alive means to move one's 
parts or members, to do things, to change or transform 
oneself, to go from place to place, to have offspring. Such 
even to-day is life as conceived by children and by the ig- 
norant. If these are criteria of life, then the sun, moon, 
and stars, the clouds, the wind, the storm, the ocean, the 
brooks and rivers, the soil as the seeming mother of plant, 
insect, and reptile, are one and all as truly alive as are 
what we call animals and plants. Moreover, precisely as 
the ignorant man of to-day accepts naively the presence 
of life as a thoroughly sufficient explanation of motion, 
change, growth and reproduction in animals and plants; 
so the primitive thinker accepts life also as the explanation 
of the motions, the changes, and the coming into being 
of virtually everything. Thus if the moon is alive, of 
course it moves and hides. If the earth is alive, of course 
it brings forth. If the storm is alive, of course it rages and 
destroys. If the sun is alive, may not the stars be its 
offspring? 

But things have often a soul also. Here again we must 

1 The problem of the origins of magic takes us back far beyond the 
limits of history and our ignorance of the actual origins is extreme. 
The subject is too vast and the differences of opinion are too many 
even to be summarized in this book. Such a summary the student 
can secure in the books referred to below. 



42 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

not ascribe to the primitive thinker the notion of the soul 
as conceived by more critical thinkers, rather we should 
try to imagine the soul as conceived by children and the 
ignorant. It is a second sort of person, a man's double. 
It is a sort of body. It can at times be seen and can wear 
clothing. It can talk, and do many things our bodies can 
do. Yet it is also markedly different from our bodies. 
It is often invisible, it can go through obstacles impene- 
trable to the body, it can travel with great rapidity and to 
places to which the body cannot go. It is less tangible, 
less solid than many objects, being like breath, bodily 
warmth or a shadow. Hence the very names, anima, 
psyche, ghost, soul, wraith, shade, spirit. 

Many experiences could have given rise to the belief 
in such an entity as the soul. In the first place, we know 
that young children and primitive men do not distinguish 
between dream experience and that of waking life. Ob- 
jects and events in the dream are believed to be present 
in the same way as they are to sense perception. Hence, 
since in their dreams they see and talk with the dead, 
the belief naturally follows that the latter must still be 
alive and be able to travel back to them and to enter even 
the most securely fastened abode. The living too in their 
dreams can gain exit from closed abodes, can travel far, 
can hunt with the dead. In the second place, the phe- 
nomena of death, insanity, mania, trance, delirium, hys- 
teria, and even falling to sleep, and awaking from sleep 
suggest as their explanation the departure or return of 
some such entity as the soul from or to the body, or the ar- 
rival and entrance into the body of a foreign soul, friendly 
or hostile as the case may indicate. In the third place, 
many other experiences may have played a part in arous- 
ing the belief in souls, for example, anger and its regretted 
deeds, unusual strength, unusual obstacles or accidents 
to man's enterprises, echoes and other unexplained noises 



PRIMITIVE KNOWLEDGE AND THOUGHT 43 

in nature, or the sudden and unexpected appearance and 
disappearance of wild beasts and birds. But all of these 
explanations of the origin of animism may be converting 
cause and effect. Once in existence animism would be a 
probable and satisfying way of explaining such facts and 
yet these facts may have had little to do with the actual 
origin of the hypothesis. Animism may have been of 
group origin and far less rational. Thus its origin may 
have been totemism. That is to say, the soul is the totem 
or a piece of the totem in each member of the clan, be this 
member a man, an animal or any other object. For ex- 
ample, if the totem of the clan is the kangaroo every object 
that belongs to the clan has the "nature" of the kangaroo 
in him or it. This something, or nature, is then the origi- 
nal soul. 1 

Once present, the belief in souls can lead the primitive 
thinker to ascribe souls to every object that he judges to 
be alive, and it helps him explain many things besides 
those things, whatever they may have been, to explain 
which the belief originated. Indeed, it explains why things 
are alive and also why«they seem sometimes to be asleep 
or dead. It explains sickness, epidemics, insanity, epi- 
lepsy, and magical and religious powers. It explains why 
events in nature seem to us often to have an emotional 
and personal trait; for nature seems to punish us, to fight 
us, to hate us, to smile upon us, or to befriend us. The 
storm rages, springtime is merry and benign, wild beasts 
are enemies or friends. Once things are thought to have 
souls, and especially such things as are man's constant 
companions, the sky, the sun, the moon, the ocean, the 
earth, the storm, the neighboring mountain, and many 
other things, the soul in them may gradually become 
somewhat dissociated from the things themselves which 

1 Here again our ignorance is extreme and the opinions of scholars 
differ. 



44 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

these souls inhabit. This is probably at least one factor 
that brought about the belief in spooks, nymphs, demons 
and gods as distinct persons, persons that can be pictured, 
named, persons that have a character and a biography. 
Hence in time came the polytheism such as we find in 
classical Greece, a polytheism with all the marks and 
associations of its primitive totemistic and animistic 
origin. 

Animism, like magic, has been from prehistoric times a 
most important part of popular philosophy, and has never 
been thoroughly eliminated even from scientific thought. 
Like magic it has been an important element throughout 
history in the conception of causation, and has been so 
not only in so-called superstitions but also in scientific 
beliefs. Let me illustrate. The soul and its powers and 
faculties have always been a part of popular psychological 
explanation. Indeed, few even professional psychologists 
quite escape animism. The soul's departure from the 
body has always been the popularly received explanation 
of death. Life has always seemed to the ignorant and, 
until recent centuries, even to the biologist, the working 
of a special hidden agent, the soul or "the vital principle." 
Even the things and events under study in chemistry and 
physics have been very slow in getting explained non- 
animistically, for " substances" and " forces" are more 
or less animistic entities; that is, they are agents with 
mysterious powers, and they are ultimates which them- 
selves seem to us to require either no explanation or less 
explanation than do the entities or processes which we 
explain through them. For example, how natural for us 
it still is to think of electricity as a power, an agent, a 
doer, a sort of spook. 

(c) Myth. — Myth, the third type of primitive belief or 
speculation, usually presupposes the other two, magic and 
animism; but myth is closer to being explicitly a theory 



PRIMITIVE KNOWLEDGE AND THOUGHT 45 

than are they. A myth is a story or yarn used intention- 
ally to explain some thing, event, belief, or custom; for its 
very function is not to interest but to explain, and by this 
it differentiates itself from other stories. As an explana- 
tion it is perhaps the clearest instance of what we have 
called a response by analogy. The inventor of the myth, 
be this inventor the group mind or some individual man, 
in his ignorance of the true explanation of the objects or 
events in whose origin he is interested, readily explains 
their origin after the analogy of that with which he is best 
acquainted, namely, human life and conduct as under- 
stood by primitive thought. To illustrate: the myth 
maker often explains the origin of things after the analogy 
of human birth. To him the stars may be the offspring 
of the sun and moon. Again, whatever in nature suggests 
to him human plans and emotions readily gets interpreted 
by a myth. Finally, the actual origin of the tribe, the 
origin of its customs and industries, and in particular the 
origin of its religious ritual are matters completely for- 
gotten by primitive peoples; but they are matters which 
readily suggest some analogy to things better known and 
accordingly are explained by a myth. 1 

Among the myths which interest especially the historian 
of philosophy are the ancient cosmogonies, and in particu- 
lar, those found among the ancient peoples of India, Baby- 
lonia, Egypt, and Greece. They suggest the wonder of the 
primitive thinker at the world about him as he saw it and 
knew it, and they foretell the coming of the time when 
man was to find a better way of satisfying his curiosity 
than by inventing stories. Moreover, these cosmogonies 
are distinctly instances of explaining nature by means of 

1 Once in existence the myth may be handed on from people to 
people, and from generation to generation with comparatively slight 
changes or additions until it reaches the hoary age of many of the 
most famous myths. 



46 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

analogies and as such represent one of the most inveterate 
philosophical habits of man. Indeed, man has been out- 
growing myth-making very slowly; and the great majority 
of people in civilized lands to-day still explain the origin 
of nature and of man by myths and still interpret the 
phenomena of nature after the analogy of human plans 
and purposes. Only as we become well informed in physi- 
cal and biological sciences and only as we acquire habits 
of seeking explanations of nature's events in terms of the 
propositions of these sciences, do we outgrow the childlike 
intellectual satisfaction given by myths and other human 
analogies. In short, we all feel much more at home in 
nature when we can explain nature and our place in nature 
in terms of human conduct, human interests and human 
emotions; that is, we still feel so, provided we can find a 
myth sufficiently consistent and ingenious not to arouse 
our intellectual scruples. 

5. The influence of social organization. — A further 
trait of primitive thought is emphasized by some sociol- 
ogists. This is the influence of the tribal social organiza- 
tion upon man's philosophy of life and of the world about 
him. For example, a monarchical society is liable to think 
of the world as a sort of monarchy; and a group of tribes 
with fixed boundaries between territories that no one may 
transgress without dire punishment, may think of the 
universe in similar fashion, as a system of realms with 
harmony kept between them by a sort of omnipotent 
world custom. Psychologically, of course, this trait is to 
be explained as a response by analogy; and in particular 
it is to be explained by the fact that the social organization 
of a primitive man's tribe is the most general or universal 
organization with which he is acquainted. Hence when he 
reflects regarding the physical environment and its order, 
he interprets them in terms of the only system he knows 
which seems commensurate. One of the most familiar 



PRIMITIVE KNOWLEDGE AND THOUGHT 47 

instances of this analogy is the medieval conception of 
the world, reflecting the political and ecclesiastical hier- 
archy in the days of feudalism and papal supremacy. 
Europe was organized through feudalism and the suprem- 
acy of the pope like a vast ladder reaching from pope to 
serf; and correspondingly the world was conceived as a 
similar ladder reaching from God through the angels and 
the church down to man and to nature below man. An- 
other example is to be found among some peoples of Aus- 
tralia, who divide what we call nature or the universe into 
the same totemistic or clan groups as those into which their 
tribe is divided. In other words, man's first classification 
of all things, man's first list of categories, man's first 
general philosophy may have been a mere reflection of the 
tribal organization. 

6. Conclusion. — We have now studied in briefest and 
most general outline, the story of primitive thought. In 
the first place, this study tells from what science has 
grown. Science has grown from two primitive types of 
knowledge, first from the thoughtful skill, or so-called 
empirical wisdom, such as that of the practical builder or 
machinist, and second from the unverified speculations or 
naive theories, such as the animistic myths. In the second 
place, primitive thought reveals in contrast to itself some 
of the essential attributes of scientific thought. In con- 
trast to practical or empirical wisdom, science is general 
and abstract. Prescientific skill is a knowledge of concrete 
particular things or situations; whereas science is a knowl- 
edge of universals of which the particular things are ex- 
amples or instances. In contrast to unverified and naive 
speculation, science is a critical research or investigation 
followed by verification. The business of science is to 
discover facts, to explain them and to demonstrate or 
verify the explanation. 



48 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

For further study read: 

Ciodd, E., Animism, 1905; 

Haddon, A. C, Magic and Fetishism, 1910; 

Thomas, W. L, Source Book for Social Origins, 651-735; 

Lang, A., Myth, Ritual and Religion, 1899; 

Encycl. Brit., 11th ed., arts. Magic, Animism and Mythol- 
ogy; 

Encycl. of Religion and Ethics (Hastings), art. Magic. 
For more extensive study read: 

Jevons, F. B., Introduction to the History of Religion, 1902; 

Brinton, D. G., The Religions of Primitive Peoples, 1897; 

Marett, R. R., Threshold of Religion, 1914; 

Tylor, E. B., Researches into the Early History of Man- 
kind and the Development of Civilization, 1878; 

Tylor, E. B., Primitive Culture, 1903; 

Frazer, J. G., The Golden Bough, 3d ed.; 

Allen, G., Evolution of the Idea of God, 1897; 

Davenport, F. M., Primitive Traits in Religious Revivals, 
1905; 

Smith, W. R., Religion of the Semites, 1894; 

Hirn, Y., The Origins of Art, 1900; 

Reinach, S., Cultes, Mythes et Religions, 1905; 

Durkheim (transl. Swain), The Elementary Forms of the 
Religious Life, 1915; 

Spencer and Gillen, The Native Tribes of Central Aus- 
tralia, 1899; 

Clodd, E., Tom Tit Tot; an Essay on Savage Philosophy 
in Folktale, 1898; 

Hartland, E. S., The Legend of Perseus, 1894-6; 

Crawley, E., The Mystic Rose, 1902; The Tree of Life, 
1905; The Idea of the Soul, 1909; 

Gomme, G. L., Ethnology in Folklore, 1892; 

Rivers, W. H. R., The Todas, 1906. 



CHAPTER V 

FROM PRIMITIVE THOUGHT TO SCIENCE 

1. Introductory. — The historical evolution from prim- 
itive belief and custom to science has been long and diffi- 
cult. As we have seen, no people has really completed 
this evolution and few nations have ever of themselves 
reached a point where the scientific enterprise is deliber- 
ately undertaken. And even where they have reached this 
point, only the intellectual leaders have reached it, not the 
people as a whole. Nay rather the intellectual enterprise 
has always met resistance from the folk or the conservative 
many; and as a consequence, wherever science has appeared 
some conflict has always arisen between it and the older 
belief and custom. Moreover, the way upward has been 
not only difficult, but also long, long even for the most 
intellectually gifted leaders; for, as we have seen, primitive 
belief and custom had to undergo an extensive develop- 
ment upward before science could even begin, and after 
science had begun the old beliefs and customs continued 
to exist interacting with and influencing the new beliefs. 
This development of primitive belief and custom upward 
toward science, its influence upon science and its conflict 
with science are the subject-matter of the present chapter. 

2. Primitive custom and religion. — It is desirable to 
introduce at this point into our discussion the word re- 
ligion as a technical term. This word as at present used 
is highly ambiguous. It is used by many historians to 
denote virtually the sum total of the beliefs and customs 
of primitive peoples as well as to denote certain related 

49 



50 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

beliefs and customs in every stage of civilization up to the 
very highest. On the one hand, this usage is justified by 
the continuity in evolution between the lowest beliefs and 
customs and the highest religion; yet, on the other hand, 
primitive beliefs and customs are the parents not only of 
the higher religions but also of art, of science and indeed 
of every phase of civilized life and experience. Here, as 
elsewhere, evolution is a process in which the parent gives 
birth to diverging or differentiating offspring. 1 Accord- 
ingly let us not call the genuinely primitive beliefs and cus- 
toms religion but the parents of both religion and science. 
And though admitting a complete developmental conti- 
nuity and a closer likeness between primitive customs and 
religion, let us regard religion as a later stage in human 
evolution, a stage, it is true, which precedes science but 
also a stage which continues to live along with science, in 
part as the rival of science and in part as a necessary com- 
plement to science in the complete life of man. Let us 
first study briefly religion, this earlier offspring of primitive 
belief and custom. 

3. National and international religions. — The social 
amalgamation of earlier tribes and clans into city-states 
or into nations, best exemplified for us in the history of 
Israel, Greece, and Rome, has usually had as one of its 
consequences a marked advance in primitive thought. 
It has tended, though not always successfully, to trans- 
form diverging local cults and worships into great national 
religions, and these religions have tended to be intellec- 
tually and morally superior to the earlier local beliefs and 
customs. This advance is due to a number of factors, the 

1 For example, in the higher vertebrate series the ancient reptile 
was the parent not only of the birds but also of the mammals, and 
let us not forget, the parent also of the recent reptiles who may 
illustrate for us the non-progressive or conservative type usually 
to be found in every evolving series. 



FROM PRIMITIVE THOUGHT TO SCIENCE 51 

chief of which we may call generalization. For example, 
many local deities may be identified and thus may become 
a common national deity. Many diverging local cults and 
rites may be succeeded by a national ritual of the city 
temple under the control of a priestly class. Again, many 
diverging magical practices and taboos and many other 
social customs may be supplanted or generalized by be- 
coming a national standardized system of customs and 
laws. This process of nationalizing local customs and 
beliefs must often have led the intellectual men to criticise 
and to outgrow the savagery and the inconsistencies of the 
older order. Moreover, it must have suggested the new 
problems and the new thoughts that led to the higher 
conceptions and nobler ideals actually to be found in the 
great national religions. 

Besides nationalizing and generalizing religion, the 
socializing of the people that takes place when tribes are 
united into nations and nations into empires produces 
other important effects upon religion. The very socializing 
of the people raises their morals and laws beyond the crude 
and narrow customs of the clan or village. Indeed it tends 
to transform customs into morals. It tends to transform 
blind obedience to the group mind into thoughtful and 
critical social behavior, for it breaks the rigid rule of local 
customs and gives man a new social world with new social 
laws and larger social interests. And, remember, as are 
people so are their gods. The gods become the gods of 
justice and humanity, the gods not only of the clansmen 
but of the stranger, the gods not only of the nation but of 
mankind. Moreover, a corresponding tendency arises, 
a tendency to outgrow the savage myths and crude ritual 
of the earlier local religion and to idealize the life and 
character of the gods. Both of these facts are evident 
in the writings of the Jewish prophets and in the Greek 
poets and dramatists of the golden age. 



52 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

Again, the socializing and nationalizing of religion is 
correlated with a great economic and political advance of 
society. Empire building brings greater wealth and eco- 
nomic stability and the disappearance of petty and local 
wars. This advance in turn influences religion. Man feels 
less dependent upon his gods and more dependent upon 
society for his prosperity, and therefore the crude and 
savage magic by which he once won his wealth and his 
wars tends to disappear. New needs for the gods take the 
place of the old needs, for now the gods are needed rather 
as the defenders and protectors of social justice and hu- 
manitarianism. Man now begins to need a god of right- 
eousness, a god that protects the weak and the lowly, a 
god that is not served by magic and sacrifice but by doing 
justly, by walking humbly and by a contrite heart. 

Finally, universalizing the local into national and inter- 
national gods tends to dissociate the gods from the crude 
totemism and other local characteristics of primitive re- 
ligion. That is, it makes the gods more abstract, more 
distant, less anthropomorphic, and it tends toward mono- 
theism. God no longer dwells in temples made with hands, 
God no longer thinks and does as man does. God no 
longer can be pictured in the crude forms of earlier thought, 
for he transcends the images and pictures of man's think- 
ing. In short, God becomes inscrutable and transcendent. 

Unfortunately the story of the rise of the great national 
religions of ancient civilization out of the prehistoric and 
primitive beliefs and customs is still largely unknown. It 
is unknown because it preceded for the greater part the 
days of historical records. Consequently our efforts to 
reconstruct the story from the monuments and the ves- 
tiges of the older epoch surviving in the later epoch is of 
necessity tentative and full of mere conjecture. However, 
historical and anthropological research during recent 
decades has let a flood of light into what was previously 



FROM PRIMITIVE THOUGHT TO SCIENCE 53 

a realm of almost complete darkness. If little is known of 
the actual details and sometimes little even of the main 
outlines of these ancient evolutions, modern scholars are 
agreed regarding at least a few general propositions. 
Every great national religion evolved by stages, admitting 
always of a psychological and sociological explanation, 
from local and often exceeding primitive beliefs and cus- 
toms. This evolution was due to and its pathway was de- 
termined by two factors, the beliefs and customs from 
which it started and new environmental agents. These 
environmental agents can be of many different sorts. 
Sometimes they are peculiar to the particular people; and 
sometimes they are of world-wide influence, as the life and 
thought of one nation interacts with the life and thought 
of other nations. At times national disaster, and at times 
economic, social and political progress are important 
factors. Each of these factors should be illustrated. 
Every religion and markedly the ancient religions ex- 
hibit vestiges of the primitive customs from which they 
are descended. The gods and demigods, the festivals 
and fast days, the sacrifices and sacraments, the rit- 
ual and ceremonies, the priestly class, the command- 
ments or religious laws and taboos, one and all can 
be traced to much older days when they, or the beliefs 
and customs of which they are vestiges, belonged to some 
savage local cult. Some cults seem to be genuine descend- 
ants of the older local religion ; but in the ancient Eastern 
Mediterranean world is to be found evidence of widespread 
religious influence from people to people. In later days, the 
days of recorded history, the influence of oriental religions 
upon Greek and Roman religions was widespread. Evi- 
dently the religion of Israel was influenced by national 
disaster and by political bondage. Finally, in modern his- 
tory we have a familiar instance of the effects of economic, 
social and political progress upon religion. The protest ant 



54 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

reformation had evidently behind it the great social, po- 
litical and economic changes that brought modern Europe 
into existence. 

For further study read: 

Carpenter, J. E., Comparative Religion (Home University 

Library) ; 
Encycl. Brit., 11th. ed., arts, Religion, Greek Religion, and 

Hebrew Religion; 
Murray, G., Four Stages of Greek Religion, 1912, 15-99; 
Cornford, F. M., From Religion to Philosophy, 1912, 73-122. 
For more extensive study read: 

Adam, J., The Religious Teachers of Greece, 1909; 
Campbell, L., Religion in Greek Literature, 1898; 
Ducharme, La Critique des traditions religieuses chez les 

Grecs, 1904; 
Harrison, J., Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, 

1908; 
Hawes, C. H., and H. B., Crete, the Forerunner of Greece, 

1911; 
Hogarth, D. G., Ionia and the East, 1909; 
Ramsay, W. M., Religion of Greece and Asia Minor, Hast- 
ings's Diet, of Bible, extra vol.; 
Kautzsch, E., Religion of Israel, Hastings's Diet, of Bible, 

extra vol.; 
Marti, K., Religion des Alten Testaments, 1906; 
Rogers, R. W., Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, especially 

in its Relations to Israel, 1908; 
Breasted, J. H., Development of Religion and Thought in 

Ancient Egypt, 1912; 
Reinach, S. (Simmonds transl.), Orpheus, 1909; 
Farnell, L. R., Evolution of Religion, 1905. 

4. From religion to science. — In the history of ancient 
civilization only one nation, Greece, developed by its own 
efforts beyond the religious stage to a stage of civilization 
that may be called scientific. Other nations, and above all, 
Persia and Israel, grew in religion decidedly beyond the 



FROM PRIMITIVE THOUGHT TO SCIENCE 55 

primitive beliefs and customs of the prehistoric peoples 
of the Mediterranean region and exerted powerful religious 
influences upon Mediterranean civilization; but Greece 
alone exerted also a distinctly scientific influence. 

However, behind Greek science and of necessity behind 
the first stages of any indigenous scientific evolution, 
stands religion. Religion gives in part the setting or the 
frame work, the general outlook, and the starting point for 
the more intellectual enterprise of the few leaders who dis- 
cover and seek to solve problems that we may call scien- 
tific. Indeed, the general world hypotheses to be found 
at the beginning of Greek scientific thought were partly 
religious and prescientific, and Greek scientists never 
completely outgrew these religious world hypotheses. In 
other words, religion gave Greece the general bounds 
within which her science developed and from which man's 
intellect failed to make its escape until the days of modern 
science. 1 

5. The conflict of science with religion. — The process 
of outgrowing the conceptions and beliefs of an earlier 
prescientific era gives rise, as we have seen, to a conflict 
between the old beliefs and customs and the new thought. 
It does so from two psychological causes. First, a conser- 
vatism exists in every individual adult and in society 
that makes the formation of any new habit which conflicts 
with strongly established habits or customs exceeding 
difficult. Second, progress in civilization, and of course 
in science, is essentially the enterprise of the variable 
gifted few and not of the conservative mediocre many. 
Hence the theory and practice of the few must of necessity 
tend always to be in advance of the beliefs and customs of 
the many. 

No wonder then that in both the ancient and the modern 

1 These matters in the history of Greek science will be discussed 
further in Chapter VIII. 



56 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

world the prophets of science, as the prophets of religion, 
have often been hailed as the enemies of man and of religion 
and have accordingly been persecuted. In the beginnings 
of science especially the teacher of new theories has seemed 
to society to be the blasphemer of the gods, the corrupter 
of the youth, and the destroyer of law and custom. Of 
course it depended upon the particular new theory and 
again upon the particular social and religious environment 
how severe the conflict became and how long the conflict 
lasted. In Greece it is remarkable to what a high degree 
the new theories were tolerated. Still Greek science had 
her martyrs. In the modern world science and scientific 
research have had to struggle for the past six centuries to 
overcome the resistance offered by the conservative many 
and unfortunately this resistance has been offered fre- 
quently in the name of religion. Almost every science, 
geography, astronomy, medicine, geology, biology, an- 
thropology, and the history of religion have seemed at 
first antireligious, heretical or blasphemous. However, 
if we remember the crude and primitive beliefs and cus- 
toms of medieval Europe and recall the tremendous change 
in the thought of Europe brought about since the year 
fourteen hundred, the rapidity of the change rather than 
the severity of the conflict will seem remarkable. Indeed, 
that science ever did arise anywhere and ever did win for 
man some freedom of thought was probably made possible 
only by the fact that society was undergoing many other 
changes at the same time. That is, Greek science came 
in days when the Greek world was progressing religiously, 
economically, socially, and politically; and similarly mod- 
ern science has come amid the vast changes that have 
created modern Europe. 

Fortunately, as a society grows intellectually and as 
it feels the benefit of increased knowledge it tends to be- 
come consciously or deliberately tolerant toward scientific 



FROM PRIMITIVE THOUGHT TO SCIENCE 57 

progress; not, however, that it has ever become in any 
civilization, even in our own, consistently and completely 
tolerant. Still, in Greece, in the Roman Empire and in 
our own days history bears witness to an amount of 
tolerance on the part of society at large toward man's 
intellectual enterprise which is remarkably great com- 
pared with the little freedom possible when the individual 
confronts the iron rigidity of custom in primitive and early 
society. In fact, the amount of tolerance is itself an index 
of advance and rank in the scale of civilization, and ac- 
cordingly in both the great epochs in western civilization, 
the ancient and the modern, man has won a liberty of 
thought impossible, or if possible no doubt disastrous, in 
the lower stages of civilization. 

For further study read: 

Bury, J. B., A History of the Freedom of Thought (Home 
University Library). 
For more extensive study read: 

White, A. D., A History of the Warfare of Science with 
Theology in Christendom. 

6. The mutual influence of religion and science. — As 

the conflict between science and religion has been dis- 
cussed and as our chief concern will be with the history of 
science, we may here best consider their mutual influence 
throughout history. The conflict has often been severe and 
unworthy, but as the historian of philosophy looks back 
upon the centuries passed he cannot fail to see right on 
both sides and mutual benefit from the struggle. Both 
sides have proved themselves to represent permanent 
interests of the human race and therefore both religion and 
science belong to the complete life of man. As a society 
with purely scientific and no artistic interests would be 
monstrous and as no such society ever has existed even if 
it can exist; so also a scientific but non-religious society 



58 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

has never really existed and if it does tend to develop it 
soon reverts to type. Indeed, the most exclusively in- 
tellectual epochs, such as the age of Pericles or the eight- 
eenth century in modern Europe, are liable to be followed 
by a period of romanticism and so revert to the more 
nearly complete life which is both intellectual and emo- 
tional. On the one hand, this struggle between science and 
religion has forced science to recognize the other funda- 
mental interests of mankind and to harmonize its interests 
with them wherever they have tended to be ignored. On 
the other hand, religion has greatly profited by the strug- 
gle, for religion has tended to be purified and ennobled. 
Religion as the more popular and the more ancient enter- 
prise has carried with it through the ages an immense 
amount of primitive belief, thought and custom. Often its 
noblest and essential elements have been hidden under a 
burden of magic, ritual and myth; and the struggle with 
science has helped the genuine religious insight of man to 
discover these noble and essential elements and bring them 
to the light of day. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE TWO MAJOR PERIODS IN THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN 

PHILOSOPHY 

1. The three major periods of history. — The history 
of western civilization may be divided into three great 
epochs. These epochs are respectively the River period, 
the Mediterranean period and the Atlantic period. The 
river period includes the great civilizations along the river 
Nile and along the rivers emptying into the Persian gulf, 
the Tigris and the Euphrates. It extended in time from at 
least four thousand years before Christ to the days when 
Greek thought, culture and military leadership dominated 
these more ancient civilizations, that is, to the days of 
Alexander the Great and his successors. 1 The Mediter- 
ranean period includes the civilizations in the lands border- 
ing directly upon the Mediterranean Sea. It extended in 
time from the ancient civilizations, so recently revealed 
to us by archeological research, in Mycenae, Crete and 
other places to our modern days when the Atlantic Ocean 
has become the chief carrier of the world's trade, that is, 
from at least the third millennium before Christ to the end 
of the middle ages following the decline of the Roman Em- 
pire and in the eastern Mediterranean even to recent 
centuries. The third, or Atlantic epoch is the present era 

1 That is to say, the river civilization then became absorbed by or 
taken into the Mediterranean. Similarly with the end of the Medi- 
terranean period, the Mediterranean culture was absorbed by or 
taken into the more extensive culture of the modern or Atlantic 
world. In a genuine sense therefore Egyptian civilization has never 
ceased, nor has the Mediterranean. 

59 



60 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

in which the nations of modern western and northern 
Europe and their colonies have come into existence and 
have become the leaders in culture, wealth and military 
power, and in which the Atlantic Ocean has become 
little more than an inland sea on whose shores these na- 
tions are grouped, leaving the Pacific the only true ocean. 
That is, the third epoch extends in time from the inroad 
of northern peoples into the Roman Empire to our own 
days. 

2. The first coming of science. — In what period of his- 
tory did science first appear? That is, where and when 
did a few men deliberately begin to give up their prescien- 
tific beliefs and endeavor to explain some things in ways we 
call scientific? Scholars agree that this first took place 
in Greece in the sixth and the succeeding centuries before 
Christ. Hence it was in the Greek world, in the days of 
Greece's greatest glory that men began to ask questions 
never before asked and to seek information which to ob- 
tain was to revolutionize man's thought and conduct. 
Then and there science after science began, for by the end 
of this period we find in existence astronomy, meteorology, 
mathematics, physics, biology, medicine, psychology, geog- 
raphy, history, grammar, logic, metaphysics, esthetics, 
ethics, and politics. 

Wonderful as these centuries were, they were not 
miraculous, as they would seem to us to be, if ignorant of 
the environment of the Greek peoples and of the civiliza- 
tion of preceding centuries, we believed them to be the 
dawn of history. This they were far from being; for at that 
time one of the three great epochs into which the history 
of western civilization is divided, was drawing to its close 
and the second epoch was already well advanced. In short, 
the beginning of science had before it as many centuries of 
civilization as have followed it. Before it were the civili- 
zations of Egypt, Babylonia, Assyria, Asia Minor, Phceni- 



THE TWO MAJOR PERIODS 61 

cia, and that of early Greece itself. So to men in the 
sixth century B. C. the civilized world seemed old, as old 
as it seems to you and to me. Moreover, these civiliza- 
tions were wonderful; how wonderful is revealed to us by 
recent archeological research. Perhaps their most remark- 
able aspect is that such gigantic buildings and public 
works, such distant sea voyages and vast military enter- 
prises, such division of labor and complicated, well organ- 
ized governments, such beautiful stone work, pottery and 
metal work, such wealth and refinement, were possible 
before the days of those sciences to which our modern 
civilization is so deeply indebted. For example, it is all 
but incredible that the builders of the pyramids and the 
vast temples of Egypt were quite ignorant of either math- 
ematical or physical science. 

Of course, they must have had a vast amount of em- 
pirical information, for instance, empirical geometry and 
mechanics. They could measure land, lay out and propor- 
tion the angles of buildings, cut stone so it would fit, and 
transport long distances stones weighing many tons. Such 
information must have been got gradually in the course of 
centuries by the primitive (or trial and error) method, and 
handed down from one generation of craftsmen and en- 
gineers to another. 1 

Let me then repeat, had not remarkable civilizations 
preceded the sixth century there would have been no 
Greek science; for the scientific attitude and the scientific 
problem are found not among the grossly ignorant but 

1 All this suggests to what an enormous extent the skill even of 
our modern craftsmen, engineers, statesmen, judges, merchants, 
bankers, soldiers, physicians, has been acquired by trial and error 
and by way of tradition, rather than by science, even though science 
has made an immense amount of our skill possible. In short, we find 
Egypt wonderful but not inexplicable, for we can see going on in 
some places right about us such trial and error processes as made 
Egypt possible. 



62 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

only among men rich in the possession of empirical and 
practical information. Consider again a few simple il- 
lustrations. The lever had to be well known and skill- 
fully used before men began to investigate and explain it. 
Human diseases had to be well known in their sympto- 
matic or empirical aspects before it entered into the mind 
of man to investigate scientifically the causes of these 
diseases. The heavens had to be watched and studied 
ages before any genuinely scientific astronomy could 
begin. A large amount of useful arithmetic and geometry 
had to be known before men could begin to discover and 
demonstrate the highly general theorems of elementary 
mathematics. Masterpieces of art and literature had to 
come into being before a scientific interest in the principles 
of art and rhetoric could arise. Language had to be spoken 
grammatically long before men ever raised the problems 
we study in our text-books on grammar. Various forms 
of government with elaborate constitutions and legal cus- 
toms had to be in existence before men began to study 
politics scientifically. 

Much as the Greeks of the sixth and the three succeed- 
ing centuries owed to their neighbors and to their ances- 
tors, they owed much also to their own environment and 
especially to the great changes in their life and thought 
wrought by the events of the eighth and seventh centuries. 
These centuries were times of great endeavor. In them 
colonies from the older Greek cities were founded in almost 
every nook and corner of the Mediterranean and Black 
Seas. Hence they were times in which a large amount 
of geographical and other information was flooding into 
the Greek world; and they were times that to-day we 
should call progressive, for colonists are pioneers, and pio- 
neers are of all men the most venturesome, venturesome 
in breaking away from the traditions and customs of the 
old home, and venturesome in tolerating new customs 



THE TWO MAJOR PERIODS 63 

and beliefs. In short, the centuries immediately preced- 
ing the birth of science saw a great change in Greek life, 
thought and custom, a change comparable to the change 
wrought in modern Europe by the discovery of America 
and of the way to the Indies round the Cape of Good Hope. 

3. The major periods in the development of scientific 
thought. — We have mentioned three great periods in the 
history of civilization and we have seen that the dawn of 
science lies well within the second period. Into what 
major periods can the development of science in turn be 
divided? 1 As there have been two great periods in Euro- 
pean history during which science has existed, so of neces- 
sity there have been two great periods and two only in 
the development of science. I say "of necessity" be- 
cause scientific development is dependent upon the great 
political, social and economic factors which make up its 
environment and because science is itself, as the product 
of the intellectual fife of civilized peoples, no more than a 
part of their civilization. Let us call these two major 
periods of scientific development respectively the Greco- 
Roman (the Mediterranean) and the modern (the At- 
lantic) . 

The remainder of this book will be given to the study of 
the philosophical development of Europe during these 
two epochs. The first task will be to give some account 
of the primitive thought to which Greek scientific thought 
was peculiarly indebted and then to trace in its four periods 

1 Here I must call attention to the impossibility of giving a definite 
boundary to most historical periods. For example, when did the 
chief center of civilization shift from the Mediterranean to the north- 
ern nations of Europe? The transition was gradual and therefore 
the end of the Mediterranean period and the beginning of the Atlantic 
period are not adjacent points whose date can be definitely fixed. 
Rather the two eras overlap for centuries and it would be thoroughly 
arbitrary and quite misleading to designate the date of a minor event 
such as the so-called fall of Rome in 476 as the point of transition. 



64 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

the development of Greco-Roman philosophy. The second 
task will be to give an account of the philosophical de- 
velopment of modern Europe. We shall now turn to the 
first subject, the development of philosophic thought in 
the Greco-Roman period. 

For further study read: 

Myres, J. L., The Dawn of History (Home University Li- 
brary). 



PART II 
ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY 



CHAPTER VII 

THE MEDITERRANEAN PERIOD 

1. Greek science and philosophy. — Man's scientific 
enterprise within the Mediterranean, or Greco-Roman 
period begins in the Greek cities on the western coast of 
Asia Minor and in the Greek colonies in Sicily and south- 
ern Italy. Later, that is, during the fifth and fourth cen- 
turies B. C., scientific thought and research become cen- 
tered in Athens. Finally, with the Alexandrine empire 
Greek science and culture are carried throughout the east- 
ern Mediterranean region, and later to Rome and through- 
out the western Roman Empire. Examined from our 
modern point of view, the Greco-Roman period seems an 
epoch of splendid beginnings in science to which mankind 
will forever remain indebted, but none the less an epoch 
in which few sciences really got more than started upon 
what has become their modern line of development. It 
was an epoch in which primitive thought was outgrown 
only in part and permanently outgrown only in a few 
places, an epoch marked by critical insight and brilliant 
speculation rather than by verified hypotheses, that is, 
an age of thought rather than an age of experimental 
investigation. As an age of thought its greatest scientific 
achievements were philosophical, mathematical and as- 
tronomical; whereas firm foundations for such sciences 
as physics, chemistry, geology, anatomy, physiology, 
psychology, sociology and economics and the scientific 
study of the history of life, of man and of human institu- 
tions, were but begun. Compared, however, with the 
thought of the preceding era and with the thought of sur- 

67 



68 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

rounding peoples, the various scientific enterprises and 
achievements of the Greeks were astonishingly great and 
numerous; and they seem even greater when we recall that 
the Greeks began the task and showed the way, whereas 
the moderns began by first being instructed by the Greeks. 
Unfortunately the golden age of Greek civilization was 
a very short period, lasting only a few hundred years 
(pre-eminently the sixth, the fifth and the fourth centuries 
B. C.); for Greece was fated to remain a group of rival 
states which could not unite and permanently co-operate. 
It may be idle to try to guess what Greece might have 
given the world, could these city-states have become a 
federated republic, similar to modern Switzerland, for 
example, and could they have given united loyalty to the 
leadership of their great men; but it is not idle to assert 
that political and social disintegration shortened this 
most wonderful of epochs. That is to say, Greece had 
either to unite and rule the world or to be ruled by the 
strong arm of the foreigner who could rule the world. The 
fates, or rather the inability to solve her economic and 
social problem, 1 made Greece incapable of choosing the 
former. The political effect was that the city-states of 
Greece lost their independence and became, first, part of 
the Macedonian empire and, later, part of the Roman. 
The cultural effect was that the learned Greek and his 
pupils became the schoolmasters of the Mediterranean 
world, and, as is so often the case with schoolmasters, 
ceased to be intellectually progressive. In other words, 
after the downfall of the city-states the scientific enter- 
prise commences to be given up and its place is taken more 
and more by other interests and by a mere endeavor to 
acquire what in the meantime has become a traditional 
wisdom. 

1 Especially the struggle between the rich and the poor, the strug- 
gle due to the inability of the freeman to compete successfully with 
slave labor. 



THE MEDITERRANEAN PERIOD 69 

One other misfortune also checked the intellectual enter- 
prise, a misfortune due likewise to political and social 
changes. It has been well called, the (religious) loss of 
nerve. Greece was not destined to develop her ancient 
folk religions into a highly ennobling and stimulating 
national religion. The religion of the enlightened and 
scientific gave way more and more to the primitive reli- 
gious tendencies of the folk and to the inroad of many 
oriental cults and tendencies. The outcome was a steady 
and increasing religious decadence, ending in a religion 
of magic, animism, and crude suggestion. 

For further study read: 

Dickinson, G. L., The Greek View of Life; 

Livingstone, R. W., The Greek Genius and Its Meaning 
for Us, 1912; 

Mahaffy, J. P., A Survey of Greek Civilization, 1896; 

Burnet, J., Early Greek Philosophy, 2d ed., 1908, 1-35; 

Gomperz, T., Greek Thinkers, Vol. I, 3-42; 

Thilly, F., History of Philosophy, 1914, 7-14. 
For more extensive study read: 

Mahaffy, J. P., What Have the Greeks Done for Modern 
Civilization? 1910; 

Zimmern, A. E., The Greek Commonwealth, 1911; 

Botsford and Sihler, Hellenic Civilization (Records of Civili- 
zation: Sources and Studies), 1915. 

2. The periods of Greco-Roman science. — From the 
foregoing it follows that there were two chief epochs 
within the Mediterranean period, the golden age (6th, 
5th and 4th centuries B. C.) and the age of decline; but 
each of these epochs may be properly divided into two sub- 
periods, giving us in all four periods of Greco-Roman 
science. The golden age, before Athens becomes the most 
prominent city in Greece for its culture, is usually called 
the early or presophistic period. It extends roughly from 
600 B. C. to 400 B. C. 1 The second period may be called 

1 Of course such dates do not apply to all or to any specific parts 



70 



THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 



the Athenian period, not, mark well, because it is exclu- 
sively Athenian but because of the prominence within it 
of Athenian culture and influence. Its dates are 470 
B. C. to 300 B. C. The age of decline may properly be di- 
vided into two periods, the Hellenistic and the Roman, 
if for no other reason, at least for the reason that the 
extension of Rome's dominion to include the eastern Medi- 
terranean countries and neighboring lands had tremendous 
consequences to the entire civilization of these peoples. 
The Hellenistic period begins in the time of Alexander 
and lasts, let us say, till the age of Augustus Caesar, that 
is, from the middle of the fourth century to the Christian 
era. In it Greek culture is carried far and wide through- 
out the Mediterranean world; and Rome, the future mis- 
tress of the world, becomes Greek in culture. The Roman 
period extends from the first century before Christ to the 
days following Gregory the Great, till about 700 A. D. 
when the decline of the old culture in Italy, Spain and 
Gaul has nearly reached its lowest point. 

Let us in the next chapter study briefly the influence 
of primitive thought upon Greek science and in the im- 
mediately following chapters the history of Greek philo- 
sophic thought after the birth of science. 



Mediterranean Period, 
600 B.C.— 700 A. D. 



Golden Age, 

600 B.C.— 300 B.C. 



Age of Decline, 
350 B.C.— 700 A. D. 



Early Period, 
600 B.C.— 400 B.C. 
Athenian Period, 
470 B.C.— 300 B.C. 
Hellenistic Period, 
350 B.C.— 1A.D. 
Roman Period, 
100 B.C.— 700 A. D. 



of the Greek world. Science began in some parts much later than 
in other parts and schools of thought endured longer in some parts 
than they did in others. Giving any period definite dates is, as we 
have already seen, a mere convention however useful and helpful 
a convention. 



CHAPTER VIII 

FROM RELIGION TO SCIENCE IN GREECE * 

1. Greek religion. — Of all religious developments that 
of ancient Greece, the mother of science, is of greatest 
importance to us in beginning the study of the history of 
philosophy. Unfortunately here, as in the case of other 
ancient religions, the historian has to work backward from 
the historically known to a period which has left us little 
if any written evidence. In the golden age of Greek his- 
tory we have evidence of two distinct religious movements 
of different prehistoric origin. On the one hand, are to 
be found the beliefs and customs of the earlier conquer- 
ing invaders of Greece from the north who gave Greece 
what is called the Olympic religion, familiar to every 
reader of Homer and of the great Greek dramatists. On 
the other hand, are to be found the old local cults and 
customs indigenous to Greek lands for ages preceding. 

At one time, the Olympic religion tended to become a 
national monotheistic and ethical religion; but this ten- 
dency was never sufficiently strong to accomplish such a 
result except in the thought and writings of a few great 
religious teachers, for the Olympic religion so full of prom- 

1 In this chapter I follow in part Cornford's book "From Religion 
to Philosophy." His views are questioned by high authority; but 
speculative and even doubtful as they may be, they are certainly 
most suggestive and point out a line of study that should be followed. 
Greek philosophy in its beginnings is an anthropological and so- 
ciological as well as a philosophical problem; and therefore the an- 
thropological and sociological point of view from which to inspect 
its beginnings is unquestionably the correct one. 

71 



72 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

ise never became completely the religion of the folk. Nev- 
ertheless its influence was felt, for it left a permanent im- 
pression upon the thought of Greece. The chief moral 
ideal of this religion was justice and self-restraint and its 
chief intellectual influence was restraint of superstition 
and encouragement of a fearless scientific as opposed to 
a mystical and superstitious conception of nature. 

Such, however, was not the tendency of the folk religion, 
the religion of the ancient local cults. And such was not 
the tendency of the cult of Dionysus and of Orpheus, 
which became a powerful intellectual as well as religious 
influence in Greece during the seventh and sixth centuries 
before Christ. The Orphic religion is essentially other- 
worldly. It centers man's interest upon the fate of his soul 
in a future life rather than upon his social and physical 
betterment in this world. In its extreme and highly 
developed form it is the religion of the ascetic and the 
mystic. In its cruder form it is the religion of dependence 
upon magical rites and initiations to control the destiny 
of man's soul, believed to be of heavenly origin, to have 
fallen and to be now making the round of the wheel of 
fortune. The soul has come from heaven to earth. After 
death it may be incarnated in lower animals, it may go to 
hades and finally it may find its way back to heaven. 
That is to say, the soul's true home is not on earth but in 
heaven. Therefore, the soul has fallen and has a fallen 
or corrupt nature. It has become defiled with the flesh 
and the business of religion is to purify, to redeem and to 
rescue the soul. In the long run the influence of this re- 
ligion became fatal to science and to human enlighten- 
ment, for under its influence the direction of least resistance 
was toward complete reliance upon magic and ritual or 
upon hypnotism and asceticism, rather than upon the in- 
tellectual and social control by man of his own destiny. 
Such a religion does lead to a certain gentleness, humility 



FROM RELIGION TO SCIENCE IN GREECE 73 

and brotherly love; but it discourages the great enter- 
prises of civilization. It reconciles man to the decadence 
of civilization instead of filling him with the enthusiasm 
and energy requisite for social and economic progress and 
for political co-operation and self-government. 

2. Greek theology. — In the highly civilized and en- 
lightened communities 1 the beliefs and customs of more 
primitive days tended to suggest explicit problems and 
theories regarding the world and human life. Thus arose 
explicit bodies of doctrine that may be called theologies. 
These theologies developed from the primitive customs 
and beliefs but they never outgrew, even in the minds of 
the greatest Greek thinkers, the typical forms foreordained 
by their lowly parentage. And of course the two great 
religious tendencies originated and controlled two dis- 
tinct lines of thought. 

The Olympic tendency can be best exemplified for us in 
the cosmogony of Hesiod. Behind and supreme above 
the gods is Fate (Moira) which divides the world into 
fixed provinces, (a) the fiery heaven, the sky, (b) the earth, 

(c) the air, usually called night and regarded as dark and 

(d) the sea (water). Here two points should be noted. 
First, these four provinces are evidently the visible uni- 
verse in its four observable strata, the bright heaven of the 
sun and stars above, immediately below it the region of 
air and night's darkness, then the water of stream, river 
and ocean and beneath all the earth. That is, we have 
here the most noticeable features of the world, the per- 
ceivable features. Second, this division of the world into 
four observable strata remains throughout Greek thought 
the chief feature of the universe. It forms one source of 
the typical Greek theories of the world and it may be the 

1 Such as the more prosperous and progressive city-states of Ionia ; 
and Magna Graecia from the eighth century on and those of conti- 
nental Greece from the fifth century on. 



74 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

source of the four elements, earth, air, fire and water, which 
remain the elemental substances for later times even to 
the days of modern Europe. 

The other, or mystic religious tendency also had its 
theory of the world. Here the thought was not the divi- 
sion of the universe spatially into compartments or prov- 
inces but temporally into a succession of stages. The soul 
makes its round from the dead to the living and back 
again to the dead. There is the seasonal round from 
summer to winter and from winter to summer. There 
is the round of the heavenly bodies and especially of 
the moon with its waxing and waning. In such a reli- 
gion the important objects of attention are the fate 
of the soul, the round of the seasons, and the revolution 
of the heavenly bodies. Time is the father of all things. 
"God, as the ancient doctrine also has it, containing the 
beginning, the end and middle of all things that are, 
moves straight upon his revolving journey in the course 
of Nature. And always attendant upon him is Dike, the 
avenger of all negligence of the divine law, after whom 
follows closely, in orderly and humble fashion, whosoever 
desires that it shall be well with him." * Here we have the 
central thought of the Orphic religion. Besides this, two 
subordinate Orphic beliefs were of great philosophical 
importance, first, the heavenly origin, the fall and the re- 
demption of the soul, and, second, the divine circle of all 
existence, the course from world origin to world destruc- 
tion and round again to a new world origin. 

3. The influence of Greek theology upon Greek 
science. — Venturesome it is, with the small amount of evi- 
dence at our command, to emphasize and to describe the 
influence of Greek theology upon Greek science; but it is 
more venturesome to think of the first scientists as scientists 
in the modern sense. It would have been a psychological 
1 Quoted by Cornford from Plato's Laws. 



FROM RELIGION TO SCIENCE IN GREECE 75 

miracle had the Greek thinkers approached their problems 
with minds universally open or open to more than a few 
of the matters heretofore unobserved or if observed, al- 
ready interpreted by custom and religion. Indeed what 
little we know of their doctrines proves that their openness 
of mind was at first narrowly limited. Moreover, one of 
the most important aspects of Greek philosophy is that it 
began and remained to the end a religious philosophy. It 
was always a theory or way of life, as well as a theory of 
nature and of man; and it endeavored to do for the cul- 
tured man in a nobler way what religion was doing in a 
less noble way for the people. 

One hypothesis points out two distinct currents running 
through the entire development of Greek philosophy and 
explains this as due to the influence of the Olympic and 
Orphic religions. In the first century of science, in the 
East and especially in Ionia, we find the influence of the 
Olympic religion stronger; whereas the Orphic religion is 
found to be the stronger in the West, that is, in Magna 
Grsecia. And Greek philosophy never completely breaks 
away from this early religious influence, but remains to the 
end two philosophies. 

4. The two currents in Greek philosophy. — As both 
philosophies become more scientific they become atomic 
theories of the universe. The Ionic, or eastern philosophy 
in so doing consistently carries its atomism over to the 
theory of the soul and ends a consistent atomistic and 
mechanistic materialism. That is to say, everything 
whatsoever is a complex of atoms moving in empty space; 
the animism of old is virtually discarded and all the proc- 
esses of nature and of mind are reduced to the motion of 
atoms; at death the soul disintegrates, and its atoms are 
scattered; there is no God, or providence, but everything 
happens from world creation to world destruction by me- 
chanical necessity. As a theory of life it bids man to center 



76 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

his interests entirely on this world and his earthly welfare 
and to discard as superstition the religion of the folk and of 
antiquity. Its logical goal is thus the philosophy we have 
already called naturalism, the philosophy of the hard- 
headed non-religious scientist, the philosophy according 
to which man's soul is to be purified by being freed from 
superstition. 

The Pythagorean, or western philosophy in becoming 
scientific remains largely religious. In its golden age, 
however, it makes greater contributions to scientific knowl- 
edge than does the eastern philosophy, especially to math- 
ematics and astronomy and to biology. It retains through- 
out its interest in man's soul and his immortal destiny. 
Philosophy is also its means of soul purification, but this 
is done by freeing the mind of mundane interests and pas- 
sions and by teaching the mind to contemplate the eternal 
and divine laws ruling, unseen by the ignorant, behind the 
world of sense. Its logical goal is thus a mystical philo- 
sophical contemplation of and preparation for another 
world, the soul's true home, and the mystic contemplation 
of the divine reason, or God in and behind all things. This 
western philosophy also in its best days tends to free man 
from his gross superstitions though in so doing it holds 
fast to some of man's oldest beliefs. Thus the two philoso- 
phies stand opposed, the eastern, hard-headed and naturalis- 
tic, the western, mystic, tender-minded and romantic. 

For more extensive study read: 

Cornford, F. M., From Religion to Philosophy, 1912. 
Eisler, R., Weltenmantel und Himmelszelt, 1910, 

5. Intellectualistic naturalism and romanticism have 
remained rivals throughout the history of European 
philosophy. — That these two tendencies, the scientific 
and the mystic, the intellectual and the emotional, the 
naturalistic and the romantic, were present even in the 



FROM RELIGION TO SCIENCE IN GREECE 77 

earliest days of European science is a matter of great 
interest; for these two tendencies have remained rivals 
throughout the development of European philosophy. 
During the sixth and fifth centuries before Christ the 
scientific and naturalistic philosophy of Ionia hold the 
leadership; but from the fifth century on through the 
Hellenistic and Roman periods and on through the middle 
ages mysticism and romanticism form the dominant 
European philosophy. With the sixteenth century natu- 
ralism and intellectualism once^ again control the mind of 
man philosophically; and finally in the nineteenth century 
romanticism again appears as their rival. Thus from the 
days of the sixth century before Christ to our own the 
two philosophies have contended. In the great eras of 
progress, the golden ages, intellectualism has been the 
leader; but in the ages of decadence and transition ro- 
manticism and mysticism have been dominant. 



CHAPTER IX 

THE EARLY PERIOD 

1. Introductory. — To understand the scientific tend- 
encies of any age we must be informed regarding two 
matters: first, the doctrines and interests, or intellectual 
habits socially inherited from the preceding generation; 
and second, the facts or problems unnoticed by the pre- 
ceding generation to which the new age attends and by so 
doing outgrows in part inherited beliefs or interests. 

Let us examine first the intellectual habits which the 
early Greek thinkers socially inherited. In general, the 
Greek scientists of the sixth and following centuries 
inherited sl goodly amount of primitive beliefs and customs, j 
magic, animism and myth. In particular, they inherited, 
as we have seen according to one hypothesis, two different 
religious traditions regarding man's life and the world 
which forms his environment; first, the Olympic religion 
favoring, as history later proved, a more rigorously scien- 
tific development; and second, the mystic religion of Di- 
onysus and Orpheus favoring a more religious and less 
scientific trend. 

Whether this particular hypothesis be true or not, 
Greek philosophy certainly grew out of the older religion. 
Indeed the major problem of Greek philosophic thought 
throughout all periods was both cosmological and reli- 
gious; that is to say, it was a religious as well as a scientific 
theory of the world. "To anyone who has tried to live 
in sympathy with the Greek philosophers, the suggestion 
that they were ■ intellectualists ' must seem ludicrous. 

78 



THE EARLY PERIOD 79 

On the contrary, Greek philosophy is based on the faith 
that reality is divine, and that the one thing needful is 
for the soul which is akin to the divine, to enter into com- 
munion with it. It was in truth an effort to satisfy what 
we call the religious instinct. Ancient religion was a some- 
what external thing, and made little appeal to this except 
in the * mysteries/ and even the mysteries were apt to 
become external, and were peculiarly liable to corruption. 
We shall see again and again that philosophy sought to do 
for men what the mysteries coukl only do in part, and that 
it therefore includes most of what we should now call 
religion. 

"Nor was this religion a quietist or purely contempla- 
tive one, at least in its best days. The mysteries had un- 
dertaken to regulate men's lives, and philosophy had to 
do the same. Almost from the beginning it was regarded 
as a life. It was no self-centered pursuit of personal 
holiness either. The man who believed he had seen the 
vision of reality felt bound to communicate it, sometimes 
to a circle of disciples, sometimes to the whole human 
race. The missionary spirit was strong from the first. 
The philosopher believed that it was only through the 
knowledge of reality that men could learn their own place 
in the world, and so fit themselves to be fellow-workers 
with God, and believing this he could not rest till he had 
spread the knowledge of it to others. The death of Soc- 
rates was that of a martyr, and 'intellectualism/ if there 
is such a thing, can have no martyrs." * 

Besides being religious by virtue of social inheritance, 
the major problem of Greek philosophy was also cosmolog- 
ical; for Greek philosophy began and remained a theory 
of the universe. To us moderns " a theory of the universe " 
sounds extremely ambitious; and that it does to us and did 
not to the Greeks is important, and is to be explained by 
1 Burnet, Greek Philosophy, 2d ed., Part I, p. 12. 



80 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

the fact that what the Greeks meant by the universe and 
what the modern means, are two quite different systems. 
We mean the vast systems of suns and their planets 
throughout infinite space, a world with no center, no 
absolute up or down, a world in which the earth is a mere 
infinitesimal particle, in short, the world of modern as- 
tronomy. They meant the visible universe of the naive 
man or of the child, the world whose top is the blue sky and 
whose bottom is the earth, the world that you and I live 
in most of the time when we are not astronomically 
reflective. Let us call it the universe of ordinary percep- 
tion. The Greeks at first knew of no other universe, for 
they first of all men outgrew this universe themselves and 
later taught other men to outgrow it. Thus we should 
not be astonished that long before science began, men had 
explained this universe of sense perception in their myths; 
that the Greek scientists had to start with these myths 
before they could outgrow them; and that in outgrowing 
them they still kept to the problem: What is the world 
that we perceive about us and how came it to be? 

I have just said, the Greeks outgrew this universe of 
sense perception, but in truth they never outgrew it com- 
pletely; for to the end of the Greco-Roman period and 
even till modern times this universe remained essentially 
not only the world of the child but also the world of the 
sage. In fact, not until the seventeenth century did Euro- 
pean science completely outgrow this world of man's 
childhood. Now the fact that the earliest Greek scientists 
lived and thought within this comfortably small world of 
primitive thought has interesting consequences ; for it im- 
plies the complete absence of a vast amount of informa- 
tion which we have since acquired and which we now, 
because of social inheritance, take as a matter of course. 
We moderns who are so thoroughly habituated to the 
world of modern astronomy can only with difficulty pic- 



THE EARLY PERIOD 81 

ture and appreciate the necessary blindness of those who 
did not inherit what to us is thoroughly commonplace. 
However, if we are to understand this blindness we must 
try to imagine how the world would appear to us were we 
quite ignorant of what astronomy and physical science 
teach and were we dependent solely upon sense perception 1 
for our information. 

(a) The sky would seem to be a blue material something 
not very far distant. Or the sky and earth would seem to 
be respectively the lid and bottom of a sort of box. 

(b) This fact would make us associate stars, sun, moon, 
lightning, sky, clouds, and rain; for they all would seem 
to us to belong to the same realm, to be neighbors. That 
is, meteorology and astronomy would form for us one 
science. 

(c) Night and darkness would not seem to be merely the 
absence of light and in particular of sunlight but to be a 
cloudlike or foglike material entity. 

(d) It would not be evident that daylight comes entirely 
from the sun. Rather it would seem to come largely from 
the\bright luminous sky. 

(e) The heavenly bodies would certainly not seem to us 
what they now do as a result of our schooling. They 
would seem rather to be small, and not extremely distant, 
fire or fiery objects. And of course they would seem to 
move from east to west, and the earth would seem to be 
at rest. Lightning too would seem to be fire and to be 
closely related to the other heavenly fires, the sun and 
stars. 

(/) Further, it would not be evident what became of the 
sun at night or what became of the stars by day; or what 

1 Not that the Greeks or any other men have ever been dependent 
solely upon mere sense perception, for this, we have seen, no one can 
be; but that mere sense perception is the chief source of information 
if we leave out of account for the moment the socially inherited beliefs. 



82 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

became of the sun or moon in an eclipse or during cloudy 
weather. 

(g) Indeed, the heavens of the day and the heavens of 
the night might seem two radically different entities. 

(h) Comets and volcanoes would of course be quite mis- 
understood by us. 

(i) What we know as air would not be known to exist. 
Wind and breath of course would be observed. However, 
they would not seem to be currents of air but each a dis- 
tinct, though nearly intangible, entity as is a vapor or a 
flame. Fire or flame would seem to us to be a material 
entity, a thing in the sense that a cloud is. As we watched 
a bonfire, the fire would often seem to us to pass directly 
into smoke, and as we watched the burning sticks it would 
often seem as though they "melted" into fire. That is, 
wood seems to become fire, and fire smoke, precisely as ice 
seems to become water and water seems to become vapor. 

(J) It would not be evident to us whence is formed the 
rain, whence comes the water in springs, whence arises 
the silt and sands deposited at a river's mouth or along its 
course, or what becomes of the rain water as it disappears 
from the ground's surface. 

(k) The true size and shape of the earth would not be 
apparent. Rather the earth would seem flat and we should 
be in doubt about its extent. Moreover, the earth would 
seem the very bottom of the universe. 

(I) The origin of many plants and animals would not be 
known to us. Some would seem to spring directly from 
the mud or from the water of the sea. Their decay would 
seem literally a return to the earth or to the water whence 
they sprang. 

(m) Many things, such as vapor, fire, cloud, smoke, and 
even lower forms of fife, would seem to come out of noth- 
ing and to pass away into nothing, as to the ignorant odors 
and sounds seem to do. 



THE EARLY PERIOD 83 

This list by no means exhausts the differences between 
the world as we picture it and the world as it might be 
pictured by us if our information were limited to what is 
revealed directly through sense perception; but it does at 
least suggest the magnitude of the difference. These 
particular naive and primitive beliefs have been chosen 
because there is evidence that the Greek scientists inherited 
them and had to outgrow them. 

Besides knowing what habits of thought the Greek 
scientist inherited and besides* noticing his lack of many of 
our socially inherited habits of thought, we must enquire 
also, if we would understand early Greek science, what 
were the new factors which led the intellectual leaders of 
that time to advance beyond the naive and primitive be- 
liefs of their fathers. The general factors in this great 
intellectual awakening have been mentioned already. 
These factors were: the establishment of Greek colonies 
throughout the Mediterranean world with their influence 
upon thought and custom, and in particular upon geo- 
graphical knowledge; the increase in wealth, leisure and 
refinement in parts of the Greek world ; the closer contact 
through trade, travel, commercial rivalry and geographical 
juxtaposition with the civilizations and with the peoples 
of Egypt, of Phoenicia and of Persia; and finally the chang- 
ing political and social conditions and the increase of in- 
dividual freedom and initiative within the Greek world 
itself as the wealth and the population grew. These sev- 
eral factors are especially prominent in Ionia and in the 
Greek colonies of southern Italy and Sicily, where science 
had its beginning. 

The special factors we have yet to mention, but unfor- 
tunately regarding most of these we are ignorant. How- 
ever, we do know that in these days some Greeks began to 
wonder about the motion of the sun, moon and stars, the 
phases of the moon and the eclipses, about the changes of 



84 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

season, weather and climate, about the cause of day and 
night, about the shape and location of island, continent 
and sea, about sickness and death, and about certain 
simple arithmetical and geometrical truths. Moreover, we 
know that the Egyptians, the Persians and the other near 
neighbors of the Greeks could arouse among the Greeks 
interest in some of these matters ; for they had much sim- 
ple empirical information regarding the heavenly bodies, 
their motions and periods and regarding elementary 
mathematical relations. Finally, we may infer that the 
many and distant voyages of Greek sailors often aroused 
an interest in geography, climate and the phenomena of 
the heavens. But whatever the special stimuli may have 
been, when the Greeks once commenced to enquire into 
these few subjects, they were led on rapidly to interest 
themselves in others, and within two centuries the field of 
their enquiry had become widely extended. In breadth of 
interest and study the only epoch in all of human history 
comparable to this of the Greeks is that composed of the 
past five centuries in western Europe. 

2. The important discoveries known to have been 
made in the early period of Greek science. 1 — Of the be- 

1 The most prominent thinkers in the early period of Greek philos- 
ophy are the following. The eastern tradition: Thales of Miletus 
(floruit circa 585 B. C); Anaximander of Miletus (ft. c. 570 B. C); 
Anaximenes of Miletus (fl. c. 540 B. C); Heracleitus of Ephesus 
(influenced also by western thought) (fl. c. 495 B. C). The western 
tradition: Pythagoras of Samos, later of Southern Italy (fl. c. 525 
B. C.) and his followers. The latter divided into two schools, the 
Pythagoreans and the Eleatics. Of the Pythagoreans (of whom 
few names have come down to us) should be mentioned Philolaus of 
Tarentum or Crotona (fl. c. 440 B. C.) and Archytas of Tarentum (fl. 
c. 430 B. C). Of the Eleatics the most noted names are: Parmenides 
of Elea (fl. c. 475 B. C); Zeno of Elea (fl. c. 450); and Melissus of 
Samos (fl. c. 440). Related to both eastern and western traditions 
and especially to Eleatic thought were: Xenophanes of Colophon, 
later of southern Italy (fl. c. 530 B. C); Empedocles of Sicily (fl. c. 



THE EARLY PERIOD 85 

ginning of the modern, or Atlantic period we have ample 
records from which we know it to have been a period of 
great and numerous discoveries, a period that was adven- 
turous and experimental in its thought and research and 
in its many other enterprises. Now little as we know of 
the details of the first century of Greek science, we have 
enough evidence to infer that it was a similar period, that 
it also was an age of discovery. In short, like the beginning 
of the modern period this century also was a period of geo- 
graphical, astronomical, mathematical, physical, and phys- 
iological discovery. 

I have already mentioned the great advance in geo- 
graphical knowledge brought about by the spread of 
Greek colonies and commerce. In general, geographical 
science- began in this period. In particular, we hear of the 
deliberate attempt to ascertain latitudes * and for the 
first time in history to construct maps 2 and to write books 
that can be called geographical. Of course, compared with 
our modern geographical information, the information 
of these Greek thinkers remained meagre and much that 
they believed was erroneous. But here as elsewhere their 
great achievement was that they made a beginning. 

In astronomy too the first genuinely scientific beginnings 
belong to this period. Instead of the primitive beliefs men 
were for the first time entertaining such thoughts as these : 
that the earth is not an absolute bottom to the world but 
rests suspended in space, 3 supported possibly by water or 
by the air; that the earth moves; and even that the earth 
swings free in space and is of spherical shape. They dis- 

455 B. C); Anaxagoras of Asia Minor and later of Athens (fl. c. 460 
B. C.) ; and finally the atomist, Leucippus of Abdera (fl. c. 460 B. C). 

1 By an instrument called the gnomon which the Greeks seem to 
have imported from Asia. 

2 Anaximander and (possibly) Hecateus of Miletus (fl. c. 495). 

3 Which makes it possible for the sun to go beneath it at night 
from west back to east. 



86 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

covered that the moon shines by reflected light and that 
it is spherical. They discovered the true causes of lunar 
and solar eclipses. They entertained the thought that the 
heavenly luminaries are bodies and that they are immensely 
bigger than they appear. Finally, some thinkers became 
convinced that the earth itself is one of the planets and 
that it moves in an orbit about a central fire. 1 In the realm 
of physics they discovered that the space immediately 
about us is not mere emptiness but is filled with air and 
that darkness is an absence of light rather than a positive 
thing. 

Notice in these few illustrations two important stages 
of philosophical growth. First, many ancient and tena- 
cious beliefs and crude superstitions were explicitly con- 
tradicted. Second, intellectual leaders were thinking 
their way beyond what is actually perceived by sense, 
entertaining even theories that must have seemed to their 
fellow citizens to defy not only all tradition but man's very 
eyesight. 

The progress of this period was great also in the field 
of pure thought, especially in logic and in mathematics. 
For the first time known to us in history men endeavored 
deliberately and explicitly to demonstrate hypotheses and 
to refute the contradictory hypotheses, 2 with the result 
that argumentation or logical discourse began itself to 
receive notice and to become an explicit problem. When 
demonstration became thus the object of study, the science 
of logic was born. Mathematics also was born in this 
period and developed rapidly. Tradition assigns its be- 
ginnings to the earliest Ionian philosophers, but its most 

1 The Pythagoreans. This central fire was not the sun. The sun 
itself was believed to be a planet shining by reflected light from this 
central fire. Unfortunately this view did not become the accepted 
hypothesis of Greek astronomy. 

2 E. g., Parmenides and Zeno. 



THE EARLY PERIOD 87 

marked progress took place in Italy and was due in particu- 
lar to the Pythagoreans. Several important elementary 
properties of numbers l were noticed, and many elemen- 
tary theorems in plane geometry 2 were discovered and 
demonstrated. The elements of harmonics also were 
studied. 

Finally, we have evidence that the science of human 
anatomy and physiology had begun. This evidence is to 
be found not only in the masterful knowledge and keenness 
of observation of human anatomy shown in Greek art 
but also in such discoveries as the flux and reflux of the 
blood between the heart and the surface of the body, 3 
and in medical writings that have come down to us in 
which primitive religious medical beliefs are explicitly 
rejected. 4 Though we know but little regarding the meth- 

1 Such as the incommensurability of some lines in terms of the 
integers, e. g., the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle whose other 
two sides each equal unity. This seems to have been the first step 
toward the discovery of irrational numbers (e. g., V2 ). Again, 
such as some properties of the continuum. Zeno proved by immortal 
arguments that if the only numbers are the natural series of integers, 
our ordinary judgments regarding moving bodies lead to absurdities. 
At his time no other view of number had been entertained. "Even 
rational fractions are unknown to Greek mathematics, and what we 
treat as such are expressed as ratios of one integer to another. Still 
harder was it for the Greeks to regard a surd, for instance, as a num- 
ber, and it was only in the Academy that an effort was made at a 
later date to take a larger view." In short, Zeno proved " that there 
must be more points on the line, more moments in the shortest lapse 
of time, than there are members of the series of natural numbers." 
(Burnet, Greek Philosophy, 2d ed., Part I, p. 85.) 

2 Such as, "The square of the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle 
equals the sum of the squares of the other two sides." 

3 Known to Empedocles. 

4 "The true spirit of Ionic science is best seen in some of the 
writings ascribed to Hippocrates, which are certainly not later than 
the fifth century B. C. In the treatise on The Sacred Disease (ep- 
ilepsy) we read — 

" 'I do not think that any disease is more divine or more sacred than 



88 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

ods of research used in this period, the records of the few 
which have come down to us show them to have been of 
a genuinely scientific and painstaking character. 

3. The Eastern, or Ionic philosophical tradition. — Let 
us now follow the two chief courses of early philosophical 
development, the eastern, or Ionic and the western, or 
Italic. Not that either tradition was isolated; on the 
contrary they mutually influenced each other. In the 
earlier days of the period especially, the East influenced 
the West; and in the later days especially, the West in- 
fluenced the East. 

Inheriting from religion, it may be, the thought of an 
ultimate power (Fate) dividing the world and keeping it 
divided into four great realms, the fiery heaven, the dark 
air or vapor, the ocean and earth, the eastern thinkers 1 
became interested in the following problems: What rules 
these four realms of the world? What is their nature 2 
or stuff? May not some one of them be the ultimate 

others — I think that those who first called this disease sacred were 
men such as there are still at the present day, magicians and puri- 
fiers and charlatans and impostors. They made use of the godhead 
to cloak and cover their own incapacity.' And again in the treatise 
on Airs, Waters and Sites — ' Nothing is more divine or more human 
than anything else, but all things are alike and all divine. ' " (Burnet, 
Greek Philosophy, 2d ed., Part I, p. 32 f .) 

1 In later days strongly influenced, it is true, by the thought of 
western thinkers. 

2 The Greek word is physis which was translated into Latin by 
the word natura, whence our English word nature. This term has 
had a long and varied history. "We seem able to distinguish two 
main heads under which its shifting senses may be grouped: the 
static and the dynamic. Statically conceived, Nature means the 
system of all phenomena in time and space, the total of all existing 
things; and the 'nature' of a thing is its constitution, structure, es- 
sence. But it has never lost its other, dynamic, side — the connota- 
tion of force, of primordial, active, upspringing energy — a sense 
which, as its derivation shows, is original" (Cornford). Both mean- 
ings lurk in the question stated in the text. 



THE EARLY PERIOD 89 

stuff or physis and may not the others then arise out of it? 
How do the individual things we behold about us arise 
out of these more nearly ultimate kinds of entity, water, 
vapor and fire; for some things (such as an animal's body) 
seem to be composed of earth, water, breath and fire? 
In answering these questions two postulates or principles 
seem especially to have controlled their thought: Out of 
nothing, nothing comes; and no thing can really be annihi- 
lated. That is to say, an animal's body does not arise out 
of nothing, for all the stuff of which it is composed existed 
beforehand; and the dead, decaying body does not pass 
into nothing, for the earth, air, water, fire, or stuffs of 
which it is composed, continue to exist, returning to the 
realms where they belong. Again, when wood is burning 
the fire does not come from nothing nor does the wood 
pass away. The fire must all along have been in the wood 
and after the wood has disappeared we must believe that 
the fire, smoke and ashes account fully for the stuff of 
which it was composed. The fire returns (going upward) 
to the realm (the heavens) where it belongs, the smoke 
goes to the realm of dark air where it belongs, and finally 
the ashes remain on the ground (the earth) where they 
belong. Thus (as we should say) there is a tendency for 
the four great realms of existence to maintain themselves 
distinct and in equilibrium. The individual things (e. g., 
the wood) constitute an unstable equilibrium precisely 
because they are of many stuffs belonging to realms to 
which they tend to return. Hence the relatively short 
duration of all (individual) things. They are disturbances 
in the original equilibrium foreordained by the ultimate 
law or ruler of the world. 1 Starting with these problems 

1 "And into that from which things take their rise they pass away 
once more, 'as is ordained; for they make reparation and satisfaction 
to one another for their injustice according to the appointed time/ 
as he (Anaximander) says in these somewhat poetical terms." (A 



90 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

and principles the eastern science led the way, influencing 
and in turn influenced by the western science, until it 
reached its goal, the atomic theory of Leucippus. 

4. The western, or Italic philosophical tradition. — The 
western thinkers were early divided into two distinct 
schools, the Pythagoreans 1 and the Eleatics; 2 and though 
these two schools had some traits in common, their in- 
fluence upon later thought was sufficiently diverse for us 
to keep them quite apart in our study. Though both 
western traditions also led toward atomism, their total 
scientific influence was unlike that of the Ionic tradition. 
In the beginning their leaders were directly under the in- 
fluence of Ionian cosmologists and later they in turn in- 
fluenced the eastern tradition and helped greatly to lead 
that tradition to atomism. Moreover, the Pythagoreans 
developed their own atomism, an atomism according to 
which the ultimate differences between the atomic entities 
are those obtaining between the regular geometrical solids, 
as the tetrahedron or the dodecahedron, and in which 
discoveries regarding the comparative length of musical 
strings also played a part. In contrast to the Pythagoreans 
the Eleatics tended to reject the possibility of science; and 
though they influenced science powerfully through their 

surviving fragment of the Greek tradition of Anaximander's doc- 
trines, translated by Burnet.) 

1 Pythagoras and his followers. The school survived for centuries. 

2 Parmenides of Elea in Italy, a seceder from the Pythagorean 
school and a severe critic of all early cosmology, and his followers. 
The Eleatic school lasted well on into the fourth century. The word 
school here used deserves notice. Precisely as the religious priest- 
hoods and similar societies, found so often in the earlier days of civili- 
zation, formed clubs or fraternities; so also did the first groups of 
scientists, the cosmologists and the physicians. Of these the Pythag- 
orean society stands out as a marked instance not only as a secret 
society but also as a fraternal and almost monastic order. Even to 
the end of the ancient, or Greco-Roman period this tendency of the 
thinkers or scientists to form schools or societies persisted. 



THE EARLY PERIOD 91 

keen criticism, they themselves tended more and more 
toward mere mysticism. Let us study each of these 
traditions in turn. 

The Pythagorean tradition remained unlike the eastern 
tradition in four important respects. 1 First its members 
tended to be mystics of the Apollonian and of the Orphic 
types; whereas most eastern thinkers were distinctly 
secular. 2 This mysticism made them interested in the 
purification of the soul and the problems of its origin, 
nature and destiny. It made them also the authors of 
the belief that was to play so important a part in the 
spiritual life of Greece, the belief that the study of music 
and mathematics or in general of philosophy purifies the 
soul. Finally, it made them the authors of the first and 
most famous arguments for the soul's immortality; and it 
made them the first psychologists. The second important 
respect in which the Pythagorean differed from the eastern 
thinker is his keener interest in the study of numbers and 
geometrical figures. The third respect is the emphasis 
placed upon form as opposed to matter as the object of 
scientific study. This problem of form is the obscure 
beginning of an interest in what the modern calls the math- 
ematical laws of nature as opposed to the cruder interest 
of the Ionian cosmologist merely in the stuff of which 
things are composed. Strange to say, the interest began 
in the study of the ratios between the length of strings 
sounding the seven or eight notes of the Greek musical 
scale. The Greek word for form is idea and this doctrine 
regarding forms, or ideas is the earlier stage of the famous 

1 In the first of these respects it is closer to the Eleatic tradition. 

2 This statement should be qualified with the further statements 
that there was a small division of these thinkers, some later Pythag- 
oreans, who were distinctly secular and that some of the western 
leaders, as Xenophanes, bitterly attacked the anthropomorphic 
polytheism of Homer and Hesiod and taught a pantheism, main- 
taining there is but one god, the world. 



92 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

doctrine of ideas of Socrates and Plato to be studied best 
as it appears in the Athenian period. The fourth respect 
in which the Pythagorean differed from the early eastern 
thinker is his interest in astronomy and medicine. The 
eastern thinkers even in the days of atomism held to de- 
cidedly cruder astronomical hypotheses; whereas, as we 
shall learn, the Pythagoreans are the ancestors of the Co- j 
pernican hypothesis. In medicine too the true beginnings 
seem to have been in the West and the later famous 
medical tradition of the East was of western origin. 

Though the Pythagorean school contributed more to 
the beginnings of the special sciences in Greece than did 
the early eastern schools, yet in the long run its mysticism 
was the enduring philosophical influence it exerted upon 
Greek thought. This mysticism, we have seen, centered \ 
about the ancient Orphic doctrine of the soul, its origin 
and destiny. The soul is of heavenly origin. It lived be- I 
fore this life as it will live after this life. Hence it is not 
intimately related to the body. Rather the body is its 
prison or is a suit of clothing which it outlasts and discards 
at death. It is not essential to the life of the soul even 
that the soul should have a body. Rather in the heavenly 
life of the soul, its best life, it is free from the burden of the 
body and from the body's limitations. What we call 
birth is the true death and what we call death is the true 
birth. Since sin (or some mysterious catastrophe) caused 
the soul to fall from its original blissful state and to become 
incarnate and defiled by the flesh; man's greatest enter- j 
prise is to find the way back to heaven, the true home of j 
the soul. Hence by purification, by overcoming the flesh, 
the way is made back to heaven. In its crudest forms this 
purification was merely a matter of initiations and magical 
sacraments, but in its noblest forms it was spiritualized , 
and rationalized. The true life of the soul is to be free of 
the flesh and of all fleshly lusts and interests, in other 



THE EARLY PERIOD 93 

words, to be holy and to be intellectual. Hence the true 
purification is to overcome all worldly interests and to 
become absorbed in the contemplation of God, or we may 
say, in the contemplation of the good, the true and the 
beautiful. Evidently such a religion is other-worldly. It 
tends to weaken the individual, the social and the political 
ambitions of a people, those interests which are requisite 
to produce the great eras of progressive civilization, such 
as the Periclean age or modern Europe. However, this 
is the religious philosophy, which as we shall see in later 
chapters, became the typical religion of Europe's greatest 
minds from the days of Plato to modern times. 

The other western school of philosophy was the Eleatic. 
The chief tendency of this tradition was to criticise science 
and to show that the scientific enterprise is futile. Its 
criticism of science was extremely keen and important and 
forced the advocates of science to do some very hard think- 
ing. In this negative way Eleaticism contributed to logic, 
mathematics and the study of the logical foundations of 
science and of the nature of science more than any other 
early Greek philosophy. Indeed we owe to its critique 
the Greek science of logic which remained the logic of 
Europe till modern times. However, in a positive way 
Eleaticism was a scientific nihilism. Its chief doctrine 
was that "all is one," that scientific analysis is impossible, 
that science cannot discover any structure in things or in 
the cosmos, and therefore that science cannot truly ex- 
plain. If "all is one," all multiplicity and variety, all 
structure and order are delusions of our senses. As a 
scientific nihilism Eleaticism tended to drift more and 
more into a fallacious and carping criticism of science on 
the one hand and into an empty mysticism and obscuran- 
tism on the other hand. 1 

1 It was reaching this stage in the late Athenian period, in the days 
of Plato and Aristotle. 



94 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

For further study read: 

Gomperz, T., Greek Thinkers, Vol. I, 80-98, 123-152; 
Plato's Phsedo; 

Tozer, H. F., History of Ancient Geography, 1897, 19-74; 
Ball, W. W., Short Account of the History of Mathematics, 

1888, 1-30; 
Cajori, F., History of Mathematics, 1894, 1-23; 
Burnet, J., History of Greek Philosophy, 1914, Part 1, 1-101; 
Taylor, A. E., Aristotle on His Predecessors, 1907. 
For more extensive study read: 

Burnet, J., Early Greek Philosophy, 2d ed.; 

Cantor, M., Vorlesungen iiber die Geschichte der Mathe- 

matik, 3te. Aufl., 1907, Bd. I; 
Tannery, P., Recherches sur l'histoire de l'astronomie an- 

cienne, 1893; 
Tannery, P., Pour l'histoire de la science hellene, 1887; 
Milhaud, G., Lecons sur les origines de la science grecque, 

1893; and Les philosophes-geometres de la Grece: Platon 

et ses PrSdecesseurs, 1900. 



CHAPTER X 

THE ATOMIC THEORY 

1. Important stages in the evolution of early cosmology 
toward atomism : (a) The general theory of transforma- 
tion. — From the beginning of Greek science, as we have 
seen, the eastern philosophers tended to believe that all 
things in heaven and earth are transformations of some 
one thing, or primitive stuff, and that this stuff is either 
water, vapor or fire. Of the more primitive cosmologies 
one that well illustrates this belief in transformation is 
the cosmology of Heracleitus. * In one quite simple 
theory Heracleitus offers an explanation of the entire 
perceptible world, that is to say, of the sky, the stars, the 
moon, the motions of these heavenly fires, the lightning, 
the clouds and rain, night and day, summer and winter, 
the earth and its inhabitants. He includes even an expla- 
nation of sleep, death, and alcoholic intoxication. His 
theory has four chief assumptions. First, the primary 
stuff is fire. Second, fire to exist has to be fed and as it 
burns it gives off smoke or smoke-like stuff, that is to say, 
all things in transforming have to be fed at one side as 
they give off the new stuff at the other side. Third, there 
is, as it were, a circle of stuff-transformation, from fire 
back to fire : to wit, fire produces smoke-like things (storm- 
cloud, darkness, etc.) ; these produce water; water produces 
earth-like things; these again produce water; water pro- 

1 1 give his theory very briefly and only in as far as it illustrates the 
preceding statement. He was really a reactionary and represents a 
view that had already been outgrown by some of his contemporaries. 

95 



96 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

duces vapor; and vapor produces fire. Thus the circle 
is complete. Fourth, the mental is fire. 

With these four assumptions all things in heaven and 
earth can be explained. On the one hand, there is "the 
path upward," the earth transforms into water (the ocean), 
the water (the ocean) transforms into the bright vapor, 
the vapor transforms into the fire (the bright sky and 
heavenly bodies). As these burn they give rise to storm- 
cloud and darkness (night). Hence comes the water 
(rain and ocean) and hence in turn the earth. The balance 
of things is kept up by these transformations being equal. 
That is, as the earth gives up water it is fed in exchange 
by water. As the sun gives up darkness and cloud it is 
fed in exchange by vapor. But this balance is not kept up 
quite perfectly in the twenty-four hours, or in the year, 
or in the course of centuries. The result is, the sun gives 
up so much darkness that it gets extinguished (night). 
The night (darkness) failing to be fed as it is in the day- 
time by the heavenly fires, gives up more than it receives 
and so becomes extinguished in turn. Hence comes the 
day (fire). Winter similarly results from a lowering of the 
amount of heavenly fire and summer from a corresponding 
excess of heavenly fire. Finally, in the course of ages 
there is a similar but far greater excess of the fiery stuff 
which means world conflagration to be succeeded by a 
corresponding shortness of fire, the birth of a new world. 
So nature goes on in cycles. It is all one, an eternal fire 
and its transformation. The world is ceaselessly changing 
but none the less balanced in its changes. x 

If we keep in mind the points made in the preceding 
chapter regarding the limited information of the first 
cosmologists, especially the appearances of the world to 
primitive perception, and the seeming simplicity of things 

1 1 omit his explanation of eclipses and of the phases of the moon. 
Notice that we have by his theory a new sun every day. 



THE ATOMIC THEORY 97 

when man is still ignorant of their complexity, we shall 
find in such a theory as this of Heracleitus the master 
work of a genius. * Given only the data of ordinary per- 
ception, his explanation was nearly adequate. But it 
could not long remain adequate for even in his own day 
new data had been added by more careful and extensive 
observation; and even with his data his theory was not 
quite adequate, for it offered no solution of the problem: 
How can one stuff transform into another? Let us turn 
to this latter problem and consider the brilliant solution 
of it finally reached by early Greek philosophy. 

In the most primitive cosmologies this question: How 
can one thing transform itself into another? did not trouble 
the thinker. Possibly a vitalistic or animistic way of re- 
garding such events not only sufficed but was assumed as 
a matter of course. That is, things are more or less alive, 
and as such, of course, they change and give birth. But 
we have ample evidence that this question soon became 
paramount. The first clear cut progress was the hypoth- 
esis that transformation is but rarefaction and conden- 
sation. 2 Notice what such an hypothesis implies. It 
implies that what appears to be a qualitative change (e. g., 
water becoming fire) is really a quantitative change (e. g., 
water is merely condensed fire and fire rarefied water). 
But the first conception of rarefaction and condensation 
probably remained quite crude and naive for the cosmolo- 
gist seems not to have enquired further into the nature of 
this transformation. Soon however this enquiry was made 
with an astonishing but consistent outcome. Rarefaction 
and condensation presuppose particles and empty spaces 
between these particles. That is, condensation is a denser 

1 Or should so find, were it not for the fact that other thinkers in 
his own day had already outgrown such primitive cosmologies and 
that Heracleitus was therefore a reactionary. 

2 Anaximenes. 



98 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

or closer packing of discrete entities, and rarefaction is the 
separation of such entities increasing the size of the inter- 
vening spaces. 

Now this hypothesis introduces a question whose final 
answer even modern science has not yet given. Are we to 
think of each of these intervening spaces as an absolute 
vacuum or is every space full? In other words, is matter 
a collection of ultimately discrete entities or is it one in- 
finite continuum? * The first answer to this question was 
offered by a western Greek thinker. 2 He found an abso- 
lute vacuum or empty space an absurdity. Empty space 
is nothing, and nothing cannot exist or be real. It cannot 
be even thought. The world then must be one solid con- 
tinuous mass or plenum? 

A further conclusion was drawn also by him and his 
followers, the Eleatics. There can be no motion and no 
change 4 for both presuppose empty space. This con- 
clusion is of course paradoxical but it was thoroughly 
logical, granted motion and change as conceived in those 
days. 5 And of course it follows as a corollary that the 
world is uncreated and indestructible, for if it was created 
it must have come from nothing. "And if it came from 
nothing, what need could have made it arise later rather 
than sooner?" Finally, that which exists is not "divisible, 

1 In the words of modern physics, are the ultimate entities of the 
physical world discrete or is there one universal continuous ether and 
are these so-called discrete entities but points, let us say, of stress in 
the ether? 

2 Parmenides. 

3 By Parmenides thought to be a finite sphere. By Melissus 
thought to be spatially infinite. 

4 Especially evident if we explain change as due to rarefaction and 
condensation. 

6 1 say "as conceived in those days," for we moderns can conceive 
of wave motions that can pass through a continuous fluid without 
displacing the parts of the fluid. 



THE ATOMIC THEORY 99 

since it is all alike, and there is no more of it in one place 
than in another, to hinder it from holding together." 

But all of this is the reductio ad absurdum of the first 
attempt to explain the world as a continuum. The enter- 
prise of science is not to refuse to admit facts but to ex- 
plain facts. Now motion and change are facts. If denying 
the existence of empty space and accepting the doctrine 
of the continuity of matter we fail to explain these facts, 
then we must either conceive the nature of continuity in 
some other way or admit the existence of empty space and 
the discreteness of matter. 1 

However, the immediate pathway of Greek thought led 
the cosmologist to keep on assuming the doctrine of con- 
tinuity. If existence contains no empty space, and if both 
motion and change are facts, how can we account for these 
facts? The answer given 2 is : the primitive stuff must be 
of several kinds. If it were alike throughout and if there 
were no empty space, change or motion would produce 
no alteration, would make no difference, and would of 
course be imperceptible. But, if we assume different 
types of stuff (e. g., earth, air, fire, water, or hot and cold, 
and moist and dry stuffs) then change and motion are the 
rearrangement, the mixture and separation of different 
amounts of these kinds of stuff. 3 

*In general, the latter alternative has been the one chosen by- 
science from those ancient days to our own, but time and again the 
doctrine of continuity has been reasserted. One very recent reasser- 
tion is that made by Sir Oliver Lodge in his presidential address 
before the British Association. Science, 1913, 88, 379, 417. 

2 By Empedocles and Anaxagoras. 

3 Let us picture it (for illustration) like a dough made by mixing 
flour, water, milk, sugar and butter. Starting with each separate 
and stirring them together produces a markedly different thing, the 
dough. Yet the dough is only a mixture of these kinds of stuff. 
Moreover, for our perception (if we include in thought also the in- 
tervening air) the mixing has not involved empty space. It is only a 



100 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

To other philosophers 1 the Eleatic doctrine that motion 
presupposes empty space seemed correct. Accordingly 
they took a second pathway. Motion takes place, and in- 
asmuch as motion presupposes empty space, empty space 
exists. That is to say, empty space exists between the 
parts of the world's stuff and this stuff is therefore dis- 
crete. It is not, however, infinitely divisible. Rather we 
must picture ultimate indivisible parts and hold them to 
be (true to the Eleatic doctrine) plena, that is, both contin- 
uous and unchangeable. Here we have finally the atomic 
doctrine, which teaches us to account for the world's 
structure, origin and changes, and for the nature of its 
different contents and their effects upon one another, in 
an extremely easy way; for it maintains that the ultimate 
particles, or atoms are alike in stuff and are unlike only in 
size and shape, and it endeavors to explain the difference 
between things (e. g., between fire and ice), and the changes 
wrought in things (e. g. } the melting of ice), merely by the 
coming together and the separation of these minute 
changeless particles of different sizes and shapes. 

(b) The origin of motion. — All the preceding theories 
either presuppose or deny motion. In the latter case the 
origin of motion is of course ruled out as no longer a prob- 
lem, but in the former case it remains a problem of great 
philosophical importance. Probably at first this problem 
was ignored, for that things move, was taken as a matter 
of course. That is to say, why the primitive stuff moves 
is felt to be no more a problem than why a living creature 
moves. In short, motion is natural to all things and, in 
this vague sense, the primitive stuff is alive. But when 
motion is denied or declared to be impossible, the origin 
of motion can no longer be ignored in this naive way. 

rearrangement in a continuous mass of the different stuffs which 
compose the mass. 

1 Leucippus, Democritus and their school. 



THE ATOMIC THEORY 101 

Still, it is interesting to see even then how naively the 
problem is solved. Animism is not given up, but only 
one step is taken toward giving it up. The usual primitive 
stuff or body is in itself motionless, but now a new sort of 
stuff is assumed (in distinction from air, fire, water, etc.), 
a moving, motion-giving body. This originates motion, 
this unites, separates or mixes the ultimate bodies and 
brings about the great cosmic changes and creates our 
present world order. This motion-giving stuff or body 
remains evidently animistic. For example, by one philoso- 
pher * it is called Love and Hate, by another 2 Reason. 3 
Finally, with atomism animism is abandoned, for the 
atomist teaches that the atoms always have been in mo- 
tion, or at least he deliberately assumes their motion as 
ultimate and unaccountable. 

Whether animistic or not the doctrine of all these 
early cosmologists regarding motion is a distinct and great 
advance over primitive thought. It transfers the motion 
of things to the 'primitive or universal stuff. The blowing 
of the wind, the storm, the motion of the sun, and a host 
of other events are no longer the acts of independent 
living entities but the result of the unceasing activity of 
the primitive body, and the same is true of the origin and 
the passing away of each thing. In short, if animism re- 
mains, it ceases to hold of the particular things, and holds 
only of the world at large or of the primitive body. 

(c) Quantity and quality. — One further and most im- 
portant feature of the progress in early cosmology should 
be noticed. If we explain the multitudinous things with 
their varying qualities by purely quantitative changes 
in some one or more primary bodies, we are thereby re- 

1 Empedocles. 

2 Anaxagoras. 

3 We find in these stuffs the ancestor of the modern notion of forces 
or energies. 



102 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

during the number of ultimate qualities. That is to say, 
all of the qualities were regarded by the earlier cosmolo- 
gists as mixtures of a few elementary kinds of body or, we 
should say, of a few elementary qualities, such as cold and 
warm, rare and dense, dark and light, moist and dry. 
This tendency to reduce qualities to quantitative changes 
in a few primary qualities reaches its goal in ancient atom- 
ism which all but reduces quality completely to quantity. 
For example, the differences between fire and earth are 
due to the size and to the shape of the atoms rather than to 
some difference in fundamental qualitative stuff. If this 
tendency had worked its effects out to the logical extreme 
(as it has in modern mechanics) 1 then the fundamental 
stuff itself would be quite robbed of quality. The atom 
would be a mere moving point. Then configuration and 
motion would be the sole notions in terms of which every 
question regarding the objects in the world about us 
would ultimately have to be put. 

2. The atomic theory: (a) Its principles. — Let us 
now sum up briefly the principles reached by early eastern 
Greek science in the atomic theory of Leucippus. (1) Fate, 
or an ultimate animistic power ordaining the realms, 
becomes a superfluous hypothesis. The kinds of stuff will 
order themselves in the cosmos without external direction, 
for they will do so by a process that is mechanical. (2) The 
rising and the passing away of (individual) things are but a 
coming together and a separation of the elementary stuffs 
of which they are composed. That is to say, the processes 
in the world about us are in every case forms of motion, 
and there is no other form of change. Ultimately what- 
ever is, is; and therefore it cannot change. It can move 
from place to place, and it can combine with other entities 
or separate from them. (3) If individual things are formed 

1 In modern mechanics the atom or material particle is merely a 
moving point, whereas in the ancient atomism, it has size and shape. 



THE ATOMIC THEORY 103 

by the combining and the separating of elementary stuffs, 
then these stuffs must be made up of separate parts or 
particles. In other words, earth, air, fire and water must 
be granular and so divisible. We should not, however, 
suppose that they are divisible ad infinitum. Rather 
there must be ultimate indivisible particles, exceeding 
minute but truly atomic. In short, everything is made 
up of atoms. (4) If all change is motion, and if all the differ- 
ent kinds of (individual) things are due to the coming 
together and the separating of elementary atomic stuffs, 
then the differences between things must be due to the 
quantity and proportion of their elements. In other 
words, quantity rather than quality explains these differ- 
ences. (5) This leads on to a yet profounder principle. May 
not all difference, even that between the elementary stuffs, 
be purely quantitative? For example, may not fire differ 
from earth merely in the size and shape of its atoms? 
This hypothesis would explain also the difference in be- 
havior of the various stuffs. For instance, if fire is light 
and mobile, may this not be because its atoms are small, 
smooth and round; whereas the atoms of earth are rough, 
irregular and larger? (6) If the world is but a cloud of 
atoms in empty space, we must distinguish sharply be- 
tween the world as it is, that is, as it is known to science 
and the world as it appears to our untutored senses. The 
world of science, the world of reason, the real world is thus 
sharply contrasted with the world of sense, the world of 
appearance. The real world is a world of elemental stuff 
and its variety and changes are purely spatial or quanti- 
tative. The world of appearance possesses a vast array 
of different things and their qualities. The real world is 
mathematical and quantitative. The world of appearance 
is qualitative and non-mathematical. (7) Finally, it follows 
that the gods of religion and myth are quite superfluous 
in accounting for the events of nature. Nature presupposes 



104 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

no guidance, for what takes place has to take place. Ne- 
cessity rules everywhere. 

In short, there exists an infinite empty void called space. 
In this space are an infinite number of exceeding minute 
particles of different shape and size. As to stuff or quality 
they are all alike, for they differ only in size and shape. 
These particles, or atoms, are in motion in all directions. 
In colliding with one another they can alter one another's 
path. Finally, some of these atoms, because of their shape 
and size, are more mobile than are others (e. g., the atoms 
of fire). These few principles are sufficient to explain the 
universe in its infinite variety of object and event! Thus 
the Greek thinker reached the famous atomic theory, one 
of the most brilliant achievements of Greek scientific 
thought. 

(b) The atomic cosmology. — How lucid and simple 
the atomic theory of Leucippus was, may be seen from 
his general cosmology. In the vast stretches of space the 
atoms are moving in all directions. The larger and more 
irregular atoms are more liable to collide and hence these 
atoms are the most retarded, whereas the smallest and 
roundest are the least liable to be retarded. "In the in- 
finite void in which an infinite number of atoms of count- 
less shapes and sizes are constantly impinging upon one 
another in all directions, there will be an infinite number 
of places where a vortex motion is set up by their impact. 
When this happens, we have the beginning of a world;" * 
and the visible world of which we are inhabitants is one 
such vortex. The rough and large atoms have been forced 
to the center and form the solid earth on which we dwell; 
and the atoms that are more and more smooth and small 
have been forced to the outside and so form respectively 
the famous zones of water, vapor and fire, namely, the 
ocean and rain, the cloud and vapor, the heavenly fire and 
1 Burnet, Greek Philosophy, 2d ed\, Part I, p. 98. 






THE ATOMIC THEORY 105 

the sun, planets and fixed stars. That our world is one of 
these vortices, explains the motion or revolution of the 
heavens and the heavenly luminaries. Again since our 
world is only one of these vortices, there are other worlds 
than ours; and between these worlds extend vast stretches 
of comparatively empty space, the intermundia. 

(c) The significance of the atomic theory. — It is im- 
portant to enquire at once regarding the significance of 
this atomic theory of early Greek science. A theory can 
be significant in at least three ways: — (1) by destroying 
or inhibiting older beliefs; (2) by arousing interest in new 
problems and by suggesting new methods of investigation ; 
(3) by what it itself enables us to explain correctly. This 
theory was most significant in destroying old beliefs or, 
to adopt a much used expression, in "enlightening" the 
cultured Greeks. A thoughtful Greek could hardly be- 
lieve that the universe is a cloud of atoms moving about 
in accordance with necessary mechanical laws, and at the 
same time continue to believe the primitive traditions 
and superstitions of his people. The worship of the gods 
and the old magical rites and ceremonies must needs seem 
to him utterly ineffective and useless, valuable customs 
no doubt for their purely psychological influence upon the 
ignorant and unruly masses but of course absurdities for 
the cultured and disciplined man. Hence no wonder 
that the spread of this and the preceding cosmological 
theories would result, in a society such as that of the Greek 
world in the sixth and fifth centuries B. C., in a radical 
enlightenment. No wonder that their spread was opposed 
by men of conservative tendencies. In this first respect 
early Greek science and in particular the atomic theory 
were of great historical significance. 

The atomic theory was of some but of decidedly less 
significance as a means of arousing new interests and 
suggesting new methods of research. It suggested prob- 



106 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

lems in psychology, physiology and medicine, problems in 
astronomy and physics, and finally problems in morals and 
politics. But it really failed to suggest fruitful and feasi- 
ble methods of research. 1 It might perhaps have done this 
latter, had not the scientific tradition, so brilliantly begun, 
been inhibited by Greece's political misfortunes. But his- 
tory records astonishingly little well directed and successful 
research as the direct outcome of Greek atomism. 

Indeed the atomic theory illustrates both the success 
and the failure of most of Greek science. Greek science 
enlightened but it seldom really informed. It destroyed 
old beliefs, it aroused many new interests, but it seldom 
led to the correct or final solution of special problems. 
That is to say, the atomic theory was an instance of bril- 
liant speculation; but it did not and it could not take the 
place of discoveries of fact or solutions of special problems. 
Such discoveries and solutions, and such alone, could 
make the atomic theory an important instrument of 
research; but they were not to come till the days of modern 
civilization, till the great modern age of astronomical, 
physical, physiological and chemical discovery. 2 

But what is the significance of the ancient atomic theory 
as a permanent contribution to European thought? To 
answer this question justly and correctly is difficult for 
two reasons. On the one hand, atomic theories have been 
most fruitful in modern physical science; 3 but on the other 

1 Perhaps the lost Democritic writings would show us that this 
was not the case. There is some tradition of experiments that form 
a beginning of chemistry, and chemistry is, of course, one of the true 
lines of progress beyond Ionic philosophy. 

2 This is not to be interpreted to imply that the Greeks did not 
make numerous special discoveries, for as we have seen they did 
make them. It means that they failed to make, for example, such 
discoveries as the chemical elements which would at once verify 
the atomic theory and make it useful in further research. 

3 Especially in mechanics and in chemistry. 



THE ATOMIC THEORY 107 

band, even we moderns are not in a position from which 
we can see the destiny of the atomic mechanistic theory 
as a general world hypothesis. Even with our wealth of 
physical information we cannot yet explain by a rigorous 
atomistic mechanics water transforming into ice or a stick 
of wood burning, not to mention the phenomena of living 
organisms. In other words, the significance of mechanical 
atomism as a great philosophical theory is still an open 
question. However, we can say that the theory has been 
of immense significance in modern science, that the theory 
has repeatedly been entertained by scientists as a world 
hypothesis, and finally that no other theory has ever 
seemed so full of promise, Hence, though the atomic 
theory of the Greeks gave the ancient world few means of 
explaining correctly any particular object or event in na- 
ture, none the less their theory was one of the most bril- 
liant hypotheses that the mind of man has ever entertained. 
3. Conclusion. — By the end of this early period, when 
Athens was rapidly becoming "the Hellas of Hellas," 
immense progress had been made beyond the thought at 
the beginning of the period a little more than one hundred 
years before. How great this progress was we can measure 
best perhaps in terms of the changes it had wrought in the 
beliefs and customs of the Greek intellectual classes plainly 
visible in the following period. 1 Several important signs 
of the revolution rapidly taking place can, however, be 
pointed out at once. First, the traditional view of the 
world was evidently breaking down and giving place 
either to a philosophical mysticism descended from the 
Orphic religion, to an enlightened skepticism, or to a 
naturalistic pantheism. 2 Second, the older nature gods 

1 These changes we shall study in the next chapter. 

2 This change becomes especially apparent in the new use of the 
word, god; for among the thinkers the religious word, god, had be- 
come a secular scientific term denoting the primitive stuff or the 



108 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

such as the sun, moon, and stars were being secularized; 
for these were no longer thought of by the scientist as gods 
but as enormous rocks, as fire, or, in general, as strictly 
natural objects. Finally, the mechanistic explanations 
of the phenomena of nature and of life were undermining 
the ancient beliefs and customs of the types we have 
called magic, animism, and myth. Especially is this notice- 
able in the rise of Greek medical science with its natural- 
izing of disease and curative methods and with its mechan- 
istic conception of life, growth, and death. In short, to 
the intellectual classes magic, animism, and myth were 
becoming superstitions. 

For further study read: 

Burnet, J., Early Greek Philosophy, 2d ed.; 
Gomperz, T., Greek Thinkers, I, 316-369. 

world's source of motion, the creative force. It becomes apparent 
also in the direct attack upon the belief in anthropomorphic gods. 



CHAPTER XI 

THE ATHENIAN PERIOD 

1. The major political changes in the Athenian period. 

— Before the beginning of the Athenian period two great 
events of Greek history had passed, western Asia Minor 
had come under the political control of the Persian and the 
Persian invasion of the Greek continent had been repelled. 
The major events that marked the course of history during 
the period were: first, the further rapid growth in wealth 
and culture of the city-state of Athens and the rise of the 
Athenian empire in the iEgean world; and second, the 
disastrous wars between the rival Greek states of the 
Greek continent. The close of the period was marked 
by the rise of the Macedonian power and the incorpora- 
tion of the city-states of Greece into the Macedonian 
empire. 

2. Athens the center of greatest Greek culture. — In 
the early period of Greek science the chief centers of cul- 
ture had been the cities of western Asia Minor and of 
southern Italy and Sicily. Now, in the Athenian period, 
Athens becomes rapidly the leader and remains the in- 
tellectual capital of the Mediterranean world until, in the 
succeeding periods, other cities share with her this honor, 
but share it only at the time the glory of Greek art, litera- 
ture and thought is waning. As Athens grows in wealth 
and political power she becomes the home of the most 
wonderful artistic and intellectual achievements of Medi- 
terranean civilization, the home of the great sculptors and 
builders, the home of the great dramatists, the home of 

109 



110 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

the great historians, the home of the great philosophers, 
and later the home also of those schools which may be 
called the first universities. 

3. The age of enlightenment. — The first half of the 
Athenian period, that is, the fifth century, is often called 
the age of enlightenment. By an age of enlightenment 
is meant a period in which the intellectual classes are rap- 
idly increasing in number and in culture. Before such an 
age there may be the intellectual leaders and their immedi- 
ate pupils but there is no large intellectual class. If at 
such a time the doctrines of the intellectual leaders become 
widely diffused, or if for any other reason the class of the 
intellectually gifted "is roused from its dogmatic slumber" 
and becomes alert to new problems and new solutions 
of old problems, then we speak of such a change within a 
people as "the enlightenment.' ' Usually an enlighten- 
ment implies a radical change in the habits or customs of 
at least a large class of the people, a radical change in their 
religion, politics, and morals, and a radical change in their 
conception of the world and of life. 

From the nature of man it follows that such a period 
can be seriously destructive; for it is often easier to break 
an old habit than to build the new habit by which it should 
be succeeded. Thus it is easier to lose the religion of one's 
childhood than to acquire a better religion in its place, and 
easier to learn to distrust the laws of one's land than after- 
ward to learn to respect a new constitution. In short, 
an enlightenment can easily be negative only and then it 
results chiefly in moral and intellectual skepticism. How- 
ever, even this negative influence of enlightenment is 
essential to a people's progress; for progress seldom means 
merely the adding of new habits without the inhibiting 
of old habits. 

Although the early period of Greek thought saw the 
rise of most of the new and radical doctrines, the Athenian 






THE ATHENIAN PERIOD 111 

period witnessed the rapid spread of these doctrines and 
the rapid enlargement of the intellectual classes especially 
among the continental Greeks. Of course, the pre- 
Athenian age had itself to be enlightened or it would have 
lacked intellectual leaders, for these leaders are the chil- 
dren of their day; but the succeeding period had not only 
the leaders but also the time to assimilate the new science. 
Moreover, the Athenian period had besides this advantage 
of time the advantage also of an extremely stimulating 
environment, a state in the height of its prosperity and of 
its political power; for Athens in these days had the wealth 
to build and to make beautiful, it had the intercourse with 
other peoples that tended to make it a cosmopolitan city, 
and it had the free institutions that favor the spread of 
information. Thus it became a center that could attract 
from the entire Greek world the men of great talent. 
No other city of either the sixth or the fifth century was 
in this respect the equal of Athens in the days of Pericles. 
4. The field of the enlightenment. — What was the 
scope of the Greek enlightenment in the fifth century? 
Positively, it included the extension of two interests among 
the people; the interest in the common affairs of humanity 
and the interest in culture. Negatively, it included a 
weakening of the blind obedience to religious, moral and 
social custom. The growing interest in the common af- 
fairs of humanity resulted from the growth of the city- 
state out of the independent villages with their patriarchal 
government; and this interest in fellow Greeks grew yet 
larger as the city-state became in turn the great center of 
commerce and the seat of empire. With the city-state 
came also democracy and with democracy came instead 
of inherited power and privilege, power and privilege that 
had to be acquired. But to gain great influence in a de- 
mocracy requires either inborn talent to lead and to con- 
trol one's fellows or an excellent training that has given 



112 THE .HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

one skill and insight in all matters of public interest, and 
frequently both of these. In other words, Greek democ- 
racies were now offering to all their young citizens of talent 
the opportunity to win the most desired of prizes but 
prizes to be won only by competing. Thus grew a demand 
before unequalled for instruction in all the arts that make 
the social, the legal and the political leader; and to meet 
this demand arose a class of itinerant teachers called soph- 
ists. These teachers varied greatly in ability, in skill 
and in information; but the important fact is the evidence 
given by their large number, by the great distances they 
often came and by the high pay they received, of an 
eagerness for the type of culture they professed to in- 
still. 

In such writers as Herodotus, Euripides, and Thucydides. 
we have clear evidence of the change that was taking place 
in the moral and religious life of the intellectual Greek. 
The old stories of the gods were no longer taken seriously. 
Religion was becoming less provincial and less supersti- 
tious. Customs were being criticised and studied. The 
customs of foreign lands were being examined with interest 
and their diversity was being noted and explained. In 
general, the intellectual Greek was outgrowing local and 
provincial religion and morality and their blind dog- 
matism. 

5. The new fields of scientific development. — What 
further fields of scientific interest did the new culture 
open? First, it made men attend to public speaking and 
all the arts therein employed. These arts are logical 
shrewdness and trickery, grammar and rhetoric. As a 
consequence we find much of the subject-matter of these 
sciences made the object of reflective research by many 
of the sophists and their pupils. With the beginning of 
this reflective research the sciences of logic, grammar, and 
rhetoric truly began; and these subjects have remained 



THE ATHENIAN PERIOD 113 

a field of study and practice from those days to our own. 
For centuries upon centuries they remained a chief part 
of the elementary curriculum in the schools of Europe, 
a curriculum which we may say was first established by 
these itinerant teachers of Greece in the fifth century. 

Second, increased interest was aroused in morals and 
politics and these customs also were made the object of 
reflective, study. As other customs began unreflective or 
blind habits, so did morals and politics; for the morals and 
laws of a primitive people are merely customs obeyed with 
the blindness of an hypnotic trance and therefore without 
reflection. Reflection upon such matters can begin only 
when the people become acquainted with the customs of 
other lands, when new customs are forced on them, when 
their own customs commence to conflict with one another, 
or finally when an increase in population and in wealth 
and its distribution compel a change of custom. Now the 
sixth and fifth centuries were such times of change of law 
and constitution; for these were the days when the old 
tribal and patriarchal government was transforming into 
the constitutional and democratic government of the 
city-state. As a consequence the people became accus- 
tomed to see the laws changed and, more than this, to see 
them made by men. Again, a wider acquaintance with 
other peoples was attracting attention to the marked 
differences and even contradictions between customs as 
viewed by the observer going from land to land. As a 
result, this was a period in which the people of Greece were 
discovering that laws are not divine but man-made, that 
the authority behind law is not God but society. This in 
turn caused a distinction to be made between nature and 
custom; nature is inborn, original and divine, whereas 
custom is man-made, changing, fallible and authoritative 
only as far as society enforces obedience. This distinction 
between nature and custom has remained, as we shall 



114 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

see, with European thought from those days to our 
own. 1 

This contrast between nature and custom is philosophi- 
cally of greatest importance. As we have seen, the original 
authority behind law, religion and all other custom is the 
group mind. Custom is obeyed because no one even 
dreams of disobeying it, it is obeyed because of the tre- 
mendous power of social approval and disapproval, and 
it is obeyed because of blind belief in its divine origin and 
in the dire consequences that follow disobedience. There- 
fore the greatest of revolutions in man's intellectual life 
is the discovery that custom is not divine, but man-made, 
fallible, calling for criticism, and having as its only right- 
ful and ultimate basis of authority the approval of human 
insight and judgment. When this revolution is complete 
we have the freedom of thought in politics, morals and 
religion essential to intellectual democracy and in the long 
run essential also to political democracy. But of course 
this revolution never has been complete and probably 
never can be. It is not complete by any means in the 
modern world and certainly was not in the ancient world; 
still the fifth century in Greece must ever be looked upon 
as the time when the true spirit of democracy first became 
incarnate in the lives of men. From those days for cen- 
turies there was a freedom of thought never since equalled. 
This does not mean that it was not an age of great igno- 
rance and superstition as compared with our own age of 
scientific achievement; but it means that men were indi- 
vidually thoughtful and were permitted and encouraged by 

1 For example we find it in the terms, natural and revealed religion, 
the former the inborn universal religion, the religion of reason, the 
latter the religion of custom, the religion of the speaker's land. Again 
we find it in the contrast between natural and civil law, the former 
not an enactment or custom of man but, as the ancients would have 
put it, a law of nature, of the reason, of God. 



THE ATHENIAN PERIOD 115 

society to think hard and to think as individuals. Men 
were free philosophically. 

For further study read: 

Tucker, T. G., Life in Ancient Athens, 1906; 

Zimmern, A. E., The Greek Commonwealth, 1911; 

Botsford and Sihler, Hellenic Civilization, 275-371; 

Plato's Protagoras; 

Thilly, History of Philosophy, 40-49; 

Encycl. Brit., 11th ed., art. Sophists; 

Murray, G., Euripides and His Age (Home University 

Library) ; 
Nestle, W., Thukydides und die Sophistik, in Neue Jahr- 

bucher fur das klassische Altertum, 1914, 17, 649-685; 
Grote, History of Greece, chap, lxvii. 
Monroe, P., Textbook in the History of Education, 1915, 

52-120. 
For more extensive study read: 

Meyer, E., Geschichte des Altertums, Bd. 4, 2te Aufl., 85- 

272; 
Gomperz, T., Greek Thinkers, Vol. I, 255-272, 275-315, 

412-437, 497-519. 

6. Scientific progress along the older lines. 1 — The 

preceding period had seen the beginning of a genuinely 
scientific knowledge in fields that we name astronomy, 
geography, mathematics, biology and medicine. What 
in turn was the progress made in these fields during the 
Athenian period? In astronomy the bridge was built 
between the necessarily speculative astronomy of the 
earlier study of the heavens and the highly scientific as- 
tronomy of the succeeding periods of ancient philosophy. 
At least two important details must be mentioned. First, 

1 Any knowledge of the details of the progress in the fields of the 
special sciences made during this and the following periods must be 
got from books dealing with the history of the sciences, such as those 
to which the reader is referred at the end of this section. 



116 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

the habit was formed of conceiving the heavenly bodies 
as revolving about the earth as a center in great spheres; 
and unfortunately through the influence of Aristotle this 
conception became the fixed hypothesis of Greek astron- 
omy in later times. Second, the earth and the heavenly 
bodies were finally conceived to be spheres. This latter 
belief was based upon genuinely scientific grounds, such 
as the shape of the moon during its phases and the chang- 
ing altitude of the stars as one travels north and south. 
In geography decided progress was made, due to the more 
extensive travelling of studious Greeks. Of such travellers 
the most famous are Herodotus and later Xenophon re- 
turning with his ten thousand across Armenia. In ad- 
dition to the added knowledge due to such Greek travellers 
there is evidence of knowledge gained from long sea 
voyages made by Carthaginians south along the coast 
of Africa and far out into the Atlantic. 

In mathematics and biology progress was easier and 
much greater. In both sciences the influence of the work 
of the earlier and contemporary Pythagoreans is evident 
as the source of the great interest of the scholars of Athens 
and elsewhere. Athens and in particular the school 
founded in Athens by Plato became the center of mathe- 
matical research and in this period the greater part of the 
mathematics that we know as Euclid seems to have been 
discovered and formulated. Moreover, the methods of 
discovery and of deductive proof exemplified in Euclid 
and philosophically most significant are the work of the 
mathematicians of this time and especially of Plato and 
his pupils in the Academy. 1 This was also the period in 
which medicine and the study of anatomy had their birth 
as sciences. Hippocrates of Cos is usually regarded as 

1 Of the mathematicians in this period the following are most 
prominent, Archytas of Tarentum, Hippocrates of Chios, Eudoxus 
of Cyzicus besides members of the school of Plato. 



THE ATHENIAN PERIOD 117 

the father of medicine; * at least he and the school of 
physicians that he founded at Cos raised medicine high 
above the primitive medicine of earlier days. They stud- 
ied the empirical symptoms of disease and the observable 
working of various methods of treatment. In short, with 
the school of Cos began that empirical medicine which 
alone could be the correct method of treating the sick until 
men knew far more regarding anatomy, physiology and 
the microscopic causes of disease, that is to say, until 
recent times. However, this statement does not mean 
that anatomy had to wait until modern times for its begin- 
ning. On the contrary, its beginning belongs to this period. 
The school founded by Aristotle in Athens we know to 
have studied in the most systematic way the structure of 
many types of animals and a little later to have begun the 
study of the different forms of many plants. 2 Mental 
anatomy, and so psychology, also began in this period in 
the effort of the Athenian philosophers to analyze the fac- 
ulties of the human mind, in which endeavor they suc- 
ceeded in differentiating some of the most marked types 
of mental traits, such as sensation, imagination, thought, 
appetition and emotion. 

For further study read: 

Tozer, History of Ancient Geography, 75—121; 

Berry, A., Short History of Astronomy, 1899, 1-34; 

Ball, Short Account of the History of Mathematics, 31-45; 

Cajori, History of Mathematics, 23-34; 

Botsford and Sihler, Hellenic Civilization, 293-302. 
For more extensive study read: 

Gow, J., Short History of Greek Mathematics, 1884, 1-191; 

Cantor, Vorlesungen liber die Geschichte der Mathematik. 

1 This he strictly was not for medicine as a science had begun in 
the preceding period in southern Italy and especially among the 
Pythagoreans. Hippocrates him self may have been indebted to 
the latter. 

2 Especially under Theophrastus, the successor of Aristotle. 



118 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

7. The major philosophical problems of the Athenian 
period. — The preceding sections of this chapter form 
but an introduction to the study of the philosophical 
growth attained in this the greatest age of Greece by her 
greatest thinkers; and we are now ready for the question: 
What new philosophical points of view were won and what 
new problems were raised? What great strides were made 
in philosophy that permanently advanced the thought of 
Europe? Negatively, we have already described the 
period as one of general enlightenment which implies that 
there was besides the outgrowing of blind custom, a fur- 
ther outgrowing of the mythology, magic and animism of 
primitive thought beyond the stage reached in the pre- 
ceding period. Positively, the philosophical growth is 
to be described as an awakened interest in two new and 
fundamental problems: First, what ultimately is science 
and how is science related to the commonplace knowledge 
of daily life which even the scientist shares with his fellow 
citizens? Is science possible; and, if so, are it and common- 
sense compatible? Second, if our laws and morals are but 
man-made customs and are without divine authority, what 
is to be the thoughtful man's guide of life and with what 
authority does this guide of life demand a following? 
Both problems remain living problems to-day, and the 
various solutions offered by the great thinkers of Greece 
remain essentially the solutions accepted by most modern 
thinkers. 

These several problems and the solutions offered for 
them can be studied by us best as they were presented by 
the intellectual leaders with whose names they have ever 
since been associated. Moreover, in the many centuries 
that have followed, these leaders have never permanently 
ceased to have an influence upon the thought of Europe, 
an influence that may be called even personal; and the 
writings they left us that have been preserved, promise 



THE ATHENIAN PERIOD 119 

to remain, what for centuries they have been, text-books 
of the schools of western civilization. Let us then single 
out from among the many great intellectual leaders of this 
period for a closer and more personal study five of the 
most influential and greatest of Greek thinkers. The 
philosophers we shall choose are Protagoras, Democritus, 
Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. 



CHAPTER XII 

THE GREAT THINKERS OF THE ATHENIAN PERIOD; 
PROTAGORAS AND DEMOCRITUS 1 

1. Protagoras. — Among the teachers and thinkers 
whom, following tradition, we still call sophists, the great- 
est seems to have been Protagoras of Abdera. 2 Probably 
two facts in the intellectual world of his day strongly 
influenced him : first, what seemed to him the utter futility 
of the teachings of Parmenides and Zeno; and second, the 
differences in custom and law observed by him in the 
several states through which he travelled. The former 
fact led him to react against science, that is, against the 
entire speculation of the early cosmologists; and the latter 
fact caused him to see that though customs differ they are 
adapted to the actual life of the several states and on the 
whole are morally and politically successful. In short, 
Protagoras was a believer in commonsense as against 

1 In my account of the doctrines of Protagoras, Democritus, 
Socrates and Plato, I am indebted almost entirely to Professor 
Burnet's Greek Philosophy. His interpretation of these thinkers 
seems to me at least probable; whereas the traditional and conven- 
tional interpretations do not. However, the student should be 
warned that all interpretations of these thinkers remain still largely 
conjectural. 

2 Born not later than 500 B. C, visited Athens at least twice, 
the last time not later than 432 and died after that date. He had 
many rich pupils and taught many years and is said "to have made 
more money than Pheidias and any other ten sculptors put together." 
He is said also to have written "elaborate works;" but none of his 
writings has come down to us and his teachings have to be inferred 
chiefly from the writings of Plato. 

120 



GREAT THINKERS OF THE ATHENIAN PERIOD 121 

science and in the practical political and social experience 
of mankind as against the doctrines of moral and political 
theorists. He was an empiricist and a pragmatist. Ac- 
cordingly, we may picture him (of course quite in fancy) 
teaching somewhat as follows: — "You philosophers have 
done much hard thinking and in order to do this thinking 
you have assumed as principles or premises what seem to 
you indubitable truths; but as a matter of fact you all 
disagree among yourselves in both premises and conclu- 
sions. Therefore something must be wrong. You all ask 
mankind to give up believing in the world which common- 
sense and daily trial have shown to be real and instead to 
believe in a world of atoms or worse yet in a world without 
even motion or change. Again something must be wrong 
with your thinking. Now what is wrong with your think- 
ing? Precisely this, that it is mere thinking, that it is a 
mere air castle; for there is but one way to find out what is 
true and real and that is by using your eyes and ears and 
fingers, by perceiving the facts of the world about you. 
This is precisely what mankind has been doing since the 
beginning. The resulting beliefs we call commonsense 
and this commonsense life has fully justified. In short, 
appeal to facts, accept commonsense, but stop logical 
hairsplitting and this endless debate that is merely a war 
of words." Let us picture next his pragmatism. 

"To this you philosophers may object that common- 
sense in one land differs from commonsense in another 
and that no two men agree even in matters of ordinary 
perception. I reply: No matter if they disagree, for they 
are viewing things from different standpoints and so do 
not see quite the same fact. Of course, one standpoint 
or point of view may be better than another but strictly 
speaking we should not reject any genuine perception, for 
a genuine perception gives us fact. Moreover, here again 
you are quite misled by your logic; for you think that 



122 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

consistency is the test of truth, whereas mankind cares 
little about consistency and rightly cares little. Mankind 
is engaged in a far more serious enterprise than carrying 
on a debate. Debating is a mere game and it matters 
little whether you are right or wrong; but life is a warfare 
where if you are wrong you meet real disaster or even 
perish. Now this test of actual life, commonsense has 
stood and continues to stand. Hence, if beliefs, customs 
and laws are found by you to differ, do not forget that 
they all are undergoing, each in its own place, each in its 
own circumstances the most severe of tests; and do not 
forget that the differences between beliefs and between 
customs may be fully justified the moment you consider 
the circumstances peculiar to the particular people or 
individual holding the belief or custom. For example, I 
have travelled far and through many states and have 
seen indeed many different laws and customs; but what 
has astonished me, is the fact that they all, as a rule, 
seem to work well and seem to be the right customs for 
the states having them. Again, I have met many men of 
many minds and habits; but here too the astonishing fact 
is that these men are usually successful and prosperous 
each in the state of life to which he has been called." This 
manner of thought, which we have pictured as that of 
Protagoras, is distinctly a philosophical attitude and one 
that great leaders of men have often tried to teach man- 
kind since the days of Protagoras. For that matter it is 
an attitude which every human being unreflectively takes 
much of the time. Commonsense and perception, not 
science; success, not argument: is a usual though unex- 
pressed motto. Thus Protagoras as a thinker represents 
a genuine type of philosophical thought, the philosophy 
of commonsense. 

Let us consider some examples of the use Protagoras 
not unlikely made of his philosophy. He may have said, 



GREAT THINKERS OF THE ATHENIAN PERIOD 123 

"things are to me as they appear to me, and to you as 
they appear to you," either without qualifying this state- 
ment or without any wish to do so. In this case he seems 
to teach a doctrine from which we can infer that no error 
is made by color-blind locomotive engineers, by landsmen 
judging of distance on the sea and by insane men having 
hallucinations. Such a doctrine (though it is usually care- 
fully qualified) is called naive realism and has been severely 
condemned by philosophers from the days of Protagoras 
to our own time. Again Protagoras may also have refused 
to accept such mathematical doctrines as that a line tan- 
gent to a circle has but one point in common with the cir- 
cle; for he may have maintained (if this correctly inter- 
prets the reports that have come down to us regarding 
him) that his eyes told him better, that any such line he 
inspected has actually some appreciable part in common 
with the circle to which it is tangent, that is, such a line 
has not a point but a segment in common with the circle. 1 
If your mathematical reasoning does not agree with this, 
then the disagreement but again shows the danger of 
abstract thinking divorced from perception. As a final 
example of how Protagoras may have applied his philoso- 
phy to particular problems, let us take one not improbable 
interpretation of a saying of his regarding our knowledge 
of the existence of the gods. You cannot by reasoning 
show whether the gods exist or not; and, we may add, 
neither can we perceive them to exist. What, you then 
ask, are we to believe? Protagoras may be pictured as 
replying: " Believe what mankind for centuries upon 
centuries has believed and found spiritually satisfying." 
The foregoing account of the teachings of Protagoras 
may be summed up by quoting the words of Professor 

1 Some modern philosophers (such as Berkeley and Berkeleians 
such as Karl Pearson) would agree in principle with this statement. 
So this matter debated by Protagoras is still debatable. 



124 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

Burnet. Protagoras "was a strong believer in organized 
society, and he held that institutions and conventions 
were what raised man above the brutes. So far from being 
a revolutionary, he was the champion of traditional 
morality, not from old-fashioned prejudice, but from a 
strong belief in the value of social conventions. In this 
sense, he not only professed to teach 'goodness' himself, 
but he believed it was taught by the laws of the state and 
by public opinion, though not perhaps so well. He had a 
profound belief in the value of such teaching, and he con- 
sidered that it begins in early childhood. The less he could 
admit anything to be truer than anything else, the more 
sure he felt that we must cleave to what is normal and 
generally recognized." 1 

2. Democritus. — The second of these great thinkers of 
the Athenian period was Democritus of Abdera. 2 We may 
remember him best and most easily by associating with 
him three facts: first, his contribution to philosophical 

1 Another "sophist" whose name at the very least deserves to be 
remembered by the student is Gorgias. Gorgias (fi. c. 430) was a 
teacher of rhetoric, whose "influence on Athenian literature, and 
through it on the development of European prose style in general, 
was enormous." Under the influence of Eleatic doctrine as well as 
that of Protagoras, he went further than Protagoras, denying alto- 
gether the possibility of science. As the ethical counterpart of this 
doctrine it is not unlikely that he taught the doctrine, might is right, 
the ethics of the strong man, the hero, the superman. The point of 
view represented in modern times by Carlyle and Nietzsche (Burnet). 

2 Flourished about 415 B. C. Little is known about his life. He 
was, as Protagoras, from Abdera in Thrace. He is said to have 
visited Egypt and Athens, though this tradition is doubtful. He was 
a disciple of Leucippus and became the head of a school, that is, he 
was not a sophist or travelling teacher. Though an excellent and 
prolific writer his writings have not come down to us. Hence his 
doctrine is largely an inference from tradition and from a few frag- 
ments. In the text I have purposely given his doctrine a too modern 
dress, believing its essential nature would thus stand out clearer to 
the eyes of the student. 



GREAT THINKERS OF THE ATHENIAN PERIOD 125 

thought was offered directly as an answer to the teachings 
of Protagoras ; second, he was a pupil and follower of Leu- 
cippus (though he had also Pythagorean teachers) ; third, 
he made a permanent contribution to the theory of human 
knowledge and of human morals. 

Democritus disagreed radically with Protagoras regard- 
ing the authority of commonsense and social custom and 
defended against him the authority of science. Democri- 
tus was, to use modern terms, an intellectualist and a 
rationalist. He did not regard ordinary sense perception 
as trustworthy or authoritative, rather he believed that 
perception is always misinforming and misleading. There- 
fore if we are to get at the truth and at the nature of 
things, we must depend upon intellectual insight and 
thought. 

As a disciple of Leucippus he inherited both good and 
bad traits. He was of course an atomist and explained the 
cosmos and its origin as did his master; and he was a thor- 
ough believer that all quality is but hidden quantity. 
Unfortunately, as an astronomer, Leucippus was far 
inferior to the later Pythagoreans. For example, he still 
held the older Ionic view that the earth is flat and that it 
floats on air. This reactionary astronomy Democritus 
seems to have accepted from his predecessor. 

However, it is his positive contribution to philosophic 
thought that especially deserves our study, his theory of 
knowledge and his theory of morals. The former theory 
is, in the modern technical phrase, a doctrine of repre- 
sentative perception. To understand this phrase let us 
see one consequence of granting Democritus that the true 
nature of the objects amid which we live and to which we 
are moment by moment responding, is atomic. For 
instance, according to the theory of Democritus this piece 
of paper upon which I write is but a conglomeration of 
minute particles of matter of different sizes and shapes, so 



126 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

small that I cannot see them with the naked eye but not 
so small that I cannot at least think of them in terms of 
their purely geometrical and mechanical properties. Evi- 
dently, then, the paper I actually perceive is not precisely 
the same paper as that of which science speaks; for the 
former is one white continuous sheet of paper and looks in 
no respect like a cloud of dust, whereas the paper of the 
atomist is remarkably like a cloud of dust. True, I shall 
be helped to relate the paper seen with the paper of atom- 
ism, if I take a powerful lens and look at the paper under 
this lens ; for now at least what I see is no longer a smooth 
continuous thing but a rough mass made up of thousands 
of minute intertwined fibres. And a high power micro- 
scope would reveal still greater complexity and irregular- 
ity. Indeed, might I not see something like a cloud of 
dust if I had the means of seeing the paper magnified 
thousands of diameters? Still, though this would help me 
to relate the two papers, it would make only the more 
evident that there are two distinct papers, the paper I see 
with the naked eye and the paper I should see had I this 
hypothetical instrument that could enable me to see 
things as Democritus' atomism describes them. 

What is the relation between these two distinct papers, 
the paper of perception and the paper of science? The 
answer of Democritus to this question is especially impor- 
tant; for over and over in the different generations of Euro- 
pean thinkers to our own day scientists have regarded his 
answer as essentially correct. The real object, thing or, 
in our example, the paper is a conglomeration of minute 
atomic changeless particles. These particles can move, 
can combine and can separate; but nothing that cannot 
be described in these terms ever takes place in their im- 
mortal career. In contrast to them the paper is merely 
a temporary combination or configuration of thousands or 
millions of these indestructible atoms. Moreover, these 






GREAT THINKERS OF THE ATHENIAN PERIOD 127 

atoms are always very busy; and could I see them as I can 
a cloud of dust or of insects or of birds, I should see that 
no member of the group is ever still, and that the group 
may be always parting with individual members and 
gaining other members. 1 What becomes of the many 
members that thus separate from the group or are even 
shot off from it as are the minute globules of water from a 
glass of effervescing mineral water? They shoot out into 
all directions of space; and some of them bombard my eye, 
or other organ of sense, and cause some sort of disturbance 
in my nervous system, which in turn, mark well, is itself 
but another cloud of atoms. Now the paper that I see 
is either merely this disturbance in my sensorium or some 
further disturbance caused by it that we vaguely speak of 
as my mental state or visual sensation of the paper. Thus 
in very truth there are two papers, the paper that does 
the bombarding, the paper fifteen inches from my eye, 
and the paper of my sensation, the paper that is the effect 
and only the effect of the bombardment and disturbance 
in the atomic conglomeration I call my nervous system. 
They are two things, for the latter is not the former but is 
only a representative of the former, somewhat in the same 
sense as we should say an ambassador is not a people 
but a representative of a people. Hence the paper you and 
I see is not the paper of science but is only a representative 
of that paper; and what is more, of course you see a differ- 
ent representative from the one that I see. We see, as it 
were, different ambassadors from the same nation to differ- 
ent foreign governments. 

This figure of speech may help us to draw two further 
conclusions of importance. First, one ambassador does not 
represent his nation as well as another; for one ambassador 

1 To-day we should state this and the following points in terms of 
undulations, but of course Democritus lived many centuries before 
the undulatory theory of light was suggested. 



128 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

may thoroughly mislead the country to which he is sent 
and cause all manner of mischief, whereas another may 
truly represent the thought and policy of his motherland. 
Second, our reason, that is our foreign minister in the 
figure, has to infer from the ambassador and his words the 
actual state of public or governmental opinion in the for- 
eign country, for he himself cannot behold this opinion 
directly. In other words and without figure of speech, our 
perception of objects varies in the degree to which the 
contents perceived are genuinely representative of the 
external objects, and our perception is always an infer- 
ential process. In still other words, the paper seen may 
be in some respects like the paper of science whereas in 
other respects they may be totally unlike, and we must 
discover through science, by inference that is, wherein 
the two papers are alike and what is the true nature of the 
external object, the so-called real paper. In short, the 
theory of representative, or inferential perception teaches 
that what you and I perceive is not the external or real 
object itself but mental states in our minds caused by the 
external object bombarding or in some other way stimulat- 
ing our organs of sense and that we can learn the true 
nature of this real or external object only through scien- 
tific research and inference. Such was not literally but 
essentially the doctrine or theory of knowledge taught by 
Democritus. 

Let us mark its logical consequence and, as we do so, let 
us keep in mind the doctrine of Protagoras against whose 
teachings it was maintained. Instead of perception being 
the guide of life and an adequate insight into the nature of 
things, it is far from being either, for it is utterly mislead- 
ing unless correctly used by the reason as a mere basis for 
further study and inference. The real world is never to be 
confused with the world of perception, for the world of 
perception is a mental world, a mere effect of the real 



GREAT THINKERS OF THE ATHENIAN PERIOD 129 

world acting upon our souls. This misleading by percep- 
tion and this confusion of two distinct things are especially 
evident in the commonplace illusions. For example, to 
one man the room is hot, to another man it is cold ; to one 
man the lantern is red, to another it is yellow; on one day 
the hills look green, and on another they appear blue; 
to the hand the oar in the water is straight, to the eye it 
is bent; to the untutored child the moon looks near, to the 
astronomer it looks far away. Thus if we stop with mere 
perception all can be confusion and illusion ; but as a mat- 
ter of fact we do not stop here even in everyday life, for 
we go on and eliminate from the perceived the illusory and 
infer the real. If then the perceived world is not quite the 
real world even for commonsense, how absurd to make it 
so for the student of reality! 

From the little evidence that has come down to us we 
can infer that Democritus' theory of conduct was as im- 
portant as his theory of knowledge. We may think of 
him as arguing somewhat as follows: — It is not true that 
custom is the last word man ought to say regarding the 
nature of what is right or wrong. Customs not only con- 
tradict one another but are often disastrously ill adapted 
to the special needs of the people under their sway. More- 
over, as a matter of fact men criticise the customs of their 
land and endeavor to improve these customs and there- 
fore no matter how obscurely apprehended by the re- 
former, there must be some principles higher than custom 
by means of which criticism is possible. To use the tech- 
nical language of to-day, either the changes taking place 
in custom are and must remain quite blind trial and error 
processes or there must be such a thing possible as a science 
of conduct. In short, if one custom is better than another 
it is the business of thoughtful men to ascertain why. 

Why is one habit or custom better than another? De- 
mocritus' answer is a landmark in the course of man's in- 



130 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

tellectual history. Happiness is and should be the goal of 
life. "The best thing for a man is to pass his life so as to 
have as much joy and as little trouble as may be." This 
does not mean the vulgar pursuit of pleasure and especially 
the pleasures that do not last, for "the pleasures of sense 
are just as little true pleasures as sensations are true knowl- 
edge. ' The good and the true are the same for all men, 
but the pleasant is different for different people.' " Fur- 
ther, true pleasures last a lifetime whereas false pleasures 
end in sorrows and pain; therefore again the false should 
not be mistaken for the true. Finally, if the good is hap- 
piness, it is not something without us and beyond our 
control as riches or luxury; rather it is a state of mind as 
health is a state of the body, and it is to be attained by 
"weighing, judging and distinguishing the value of differ- 
ent pleasures." l In other words, two important principles 
are to be laid down : First, happiness or goodness is not a 
matter of wealth or circumstance but is a stale of mind; 
second, goodness depends upon knowledge or insight, for 
the wise alone are capable of discriminating the true from 
the false pleasure, the ignorant are not. In short, the 
reason why any man is bad is because he is ignorant and 
irrational. 

These two principles deserve to be carefully studied for 
two reasons: first, they are typically Greek and endure 
in Greek ethical thought for centuries; and second, they 
are a basis of a religion rather than of a science of human 
conduct. Make the good a state of mind and divorce it 
from the deeds, the events and the social enterprises that 
make up human life and history, and you have made it 
merely a matter of personal discipline. With this done 
ethics ceases to be a science of man's enterprise, the enter- 
prise of the ages of history and the enterprise of public 

1 Quoted and adapted from Burnet, Greek Philosophy, Part I, 
p. 200. 






GREAT THINKERS OF THE ATHENIAN PERIOD 131 

and private life. Again, make the attainment of the good 
a matter of wisdom rather than a matter of law and con- 
duct and you turn moral philosophy from a science into a 
religion ; for now the only means of becoming good is to be 
a philosopher and the chief reason for becoming a phi- 
losopher is to become good. As a matter of fact this change 
from a science of conduct to a religion was the destiny of 
Greek ethical philosophy in the succeeding centuries. 1 

For further study read: 

Burnet, J., History of Greek Philosophy, Part I, 105-125, 

193-201; 
Bakewell, C. M., Source Book in Ancient Philosophy, 1907, 

57-66; 
Plato's Protagoras and Thesetetus. 

x As we shall learn in later chapters. We shall also compare in 
contrast with it the work of the Roman jurists. 



CHAPTER XIII 

THE GREAT THINKERS OF THE ATHENIAN PERIOD ! 
SOCRATES AND PLATO 

1. Socrates. 1 — Like Democritus the famous Athenian 
philosopher, Socrates, was an opponent of the teachings 

1 Born about 470 B. C, died 399 B. C. Socrates was an Athenian 
and lived and died in Athens. In his earlier years he seems to have 
studied the writings of the older philosophers, to have been the pupil 
of some of them and to have met others. In particular there is 
evidence of his acquaintance with the teachings of Empedocles, 
Philolaus, Anaxagoras and some Ionian philosophers. Further, there 
is excellent evidence of an early conflict in the mind of Socrates be- 
tween the Ionic cosmology and the Italic philosophy, with a strong 
leaning on his part toward the Italic. Indeed, he seems to have been 
intensely interested in the ancient folk-lore and in the noblest ele- 
ments of the Orphic and Pythagorean religions and to have combined 
in his character shrewdness, commonsense and mysticism. He made 
the acquaintance of Parmenides, Zeno and Protagoras and other 
sophists. Of these Zeno had the greatest influence upon him, which 
fact in part at least accounts for the Socratic method, the method of 
analyzing a theory logically by cross-examining some exponent of 
the theory, the famous Socratic dialogue. Socrates seems to have 
attracted attention early in life as well he might, for no Athenian 
before him had ever had his interests. Young men seem early to 
have been his admirers and to have gone to him for advice regarding 
their studies and teachers. Socrates was in several campaigns during 
the Peloponnesian war and was known for his remarkable personal 
bravery. In these days he seems to have gathered about him a 
closer circle of friends and companions that seemed to others at 
least to be disciples; but he never seems to have had a school or to 
have had disciples in the strictest sense of that word. However this 
may be, the circle of Socrates' influence was very wide, much wider 
than Athens, for it included especially foreign Eleatics and Pythag- 
oreans. At the age of seventy Socrates was brought to trial on a 

132 



GREAT THINKERS OF THE ATHENIAN PERIOD 133 

of Protagoras; but as Democritus represented the Ionic 
tradition in combating the teachings of Protagoras Soc- 
rates represented the Pythagorean tradition. "After the 
departure of Phildaus for Italy, Socrates became to all 
intents and purposes the head of the Pythagoreans who 
remained behind ;" 'for to him they looked as the most 
authoritative exponent of their common philosophy. 
However, he was a leader of another type from that rep- 
resented by Philolaus, for he was deeply interested in 
Pythagoreanism as a philosophy of life, or as a religion; 
whereas Philolaus was distinctly scientific in his interest. 
As a consequence, we find Socrates instructing his Pythag- 
orean followers in the older discarded doctrines of Pythag- 
oreanism regarding the nature of the soul and defending 
these doctrines against the newer and more scientific 
teachings. Moreover, he does this with a distinctly re- 
ligious rather than a scientific interest, for he wishes to 
prove the immortality of the soul and to outline its career 
in the life beyond death. That is to say, the more scien- 
tific Pythagoreans in these days reflected the thought of 
the enlightenment by losing interest and confidence in the 
Orphic and other mystic elements in their philosophy and 
by increasing their interest in the strictly scientific re- 
search carried on in their school, which meant, as we have 

charge of impiety and was condemned and executed. But impiety 
was probably not the real ground of indictment; rather this ground 
seems to have been political, for Socrates seems to have criticised 
the Athenian democracy and its leaders and to have been opposed 
to popular rule believing and teaching that government requires 
experts as truly as does any trade or craft. As well hand over a 
sailing vessel to the hands of an inexperienced landsman as the state 
to the control of the folk. (The view of the life and teaching of Soc- 
rates briefly outlined in this chapter presupposes that we have in 
the dialogues of Plato an endeavor to give a faithful picture of the 
real Socrates. The traditional and usual account of the life and 
teaching of Socrates does not accept this premise. Cf. Burnet, Greek 
Philosophy, Part I, pp. 126-128.) 



134 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

seen, especially mathematics, astronomy and medicine. 
Of the mind they had come to adopt a physiological ex- 
planation, regarding its phenomena as a mere function of 
the body, or to use the language of that day, as an attune- 
ment of the body. This Socrates did not do; rather he 
directly combats this view of the soul defending instead 
a distinctly animistic doctrine, according to which the soul 
is the vital, or life-giving, principle in the body and being 
itself the source of life is by its very nature immortal. 
In short, Socrates had in him a deep mystic strain 
and a moral enthusiasm that made him more than a 
philosopher, indeed that made him for centuries one of the 
great saints and religious leaders of the Greco-Roman 
world. 

2. The Socratic doctrine of forms, or ideas. — How- 
ever, Socrates was not merely a mystic, for he was also one 
of the keenest of Greek thinkers. Two of the philosophical 
problems which he endeavored to solve, were virtually 
the same as those which interested his contemporary 
Democritus: first, What is the nature of science and how 
is it related to commonsense, or ordinary knowledge? 
and second, What is the nature of the good and how is it 
related to the widely recognized virtues of daily life? To 
both questions he gives answers different from those offered 
by Democritus, answers that clearly indicate the influence 
of Zeno and the Pythagoreans. 

The business of science is to discover "the forms." 
This word "form" can perhaps be rightly translated by the 
expression "the logical prototype;" and it can be most 
easily illustrated from mathematics and biology. In nature 
we never find the triangles, the circles, the straight lines 
or the equalities which are to be found in geometry. 
Rather what we find, are at the nearest only approxima- 
tions to these ideal entities; for no stick or rope is quite 
straight and without thickness, as required in the geometri- 



GREAT THINKERS OF THE ATHENIAN PERIOD 135 

cal straight line, and, as Protagoras said, no actual circle 
and tangent have but one point in common, and finally 
no two bodies are precisely equal in weight, length and 
number of parts. To use an illustration given by Pro- 
fessor Burnet, we can in practice approach as nearly as 
we choose to the irrational number w, and thereby square 
approximately the circle; but actually no one ever has and, 
we believe, no one ever can square the circle. Now the 
number tt is a form, the triangle also is a form, so are the 
straight line and the circle and finally so is equality. Again 
let us illustrate what Socrates seems to have meant by 
"the form" by taking instances from biology. (Though 
Socrates himself does not seem to have done so.) As 
anatomists we may study many specimens of a certain 
animal type to ascertain what constitutes the type, or 
what differentiates the type from other related types. 
For example, what is the cat, that is the type, or "form" 
Felis which the lion, tiger, panther, wild cat and many 
other species exemplify? In short, such entities as those 
named by us the cat, the mammal, the vertebrate and 
countless other animal and plant types are forms. The 
individual cat, let us say a particular house-cat, is an ex- 
ample of the type; or, as we may put it, the type cat, "the 
form" is exemplified in this specimen; or again, this cat 
partakes of the nature of "the form" Felis. What then is 
science? Science as conceived by Socrates is diagnosis. It 
is to be illustrated by the physician judging of the nature 
of an ailment, the morphologist deciding the type of a 
plant or animal, the geometrician discovering the nature 
or type of a curve, or the moralist interpreting an act as 
just. To repeat, the task of science is to discover the 
nature, 1 the idea or form. 

In saying this let us not make the error of calling these 
forms classes, for such they probably were not in the eyes 

1 The physis. 



136 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

of Socrates. The cat is indeed a class (felis). But the 
cat is also an entity, a form; for as Huxley has told us, the 
anatomist after studying many specimens commences 
literally to see a new object, the typical entity, the abstract 
entity, in this instance, the cat-form. Evidently a similar 
truth holds in mathematics also, where Socrates the 
Pythagorean would probably have chosen his illustrations. 
Take for example, the triangle. It is indeed the name of a 
class, but it is also the name of an entity. It is, as I am 
this instant picturing it, not a class with an infinite num- 
ber of members nor is it a mere name, rather it is an en- 
tity, "the triangle." It is literally a thing. To repeat, 
the task of science according to Socrates, is to discover 
these entities or forms or types: especially the types of 
geometrical figures, the types of number, the nature of 
the good and the form of the beautiful. 

One further matter needs to be pointed out before we 
can fully ascertain Socrates' answer to the question: 
What is science? As Democritus distinguishes sharply 
between the sensible world of objects and the intellectual, 
or scientific world of atoms; so also does Socrates distin- 
guish sharply between the sensible world of objects and the 
scientific world of forms. The world of sense perception 
is not reality. It is appearance and is therefore something 
less than genuine reality. Reality being discoverable 
only by thought or intellectual insight, science alone can 
reveal this higher world, a world hidden from the ignorant 
and from those who lack the mystical love or curiosity 
that impels the scientist onward to explore the realms of 
true being. In other and clearer words, the real world is 
not the world revealed to our senses but the world that 
science gives us in its place; and the relation between the 
two worlds is that between the appearance of things, or 
the world seen through a glass darkly, and the reality of 
things, or the world seen face to face. Things only approxi- 



GREAT THINKERS OF THE ATHENIAN PERIOD 137 

mate the forms. Here unite in one man Socrates the 
mystic and Socrates the rationalist. 

3. The Socratic doctrine of the nature of the good. — 
The second major problem in the philosophy of Socrates 
was that of the nature of the good. Indeed for him this 
probably seemed the more important of the two problems. 
Of course, the good is a form, the form in which all good 
acts participate; but what is the definition of the good? 
Socrates does not tell us and he cannot for the following 
reason. The good is the very foundation of the world 
which can be beheld in the philosopher's mystic vision but 
which cannot itself be analyzed as can the other forms. 
Or to use a Socratic figure of speech, it is the sun, the source 
of all light and therefore of all vision but too bright and 
powerful to be itself the object of sight except to the 
strongest eyes, if even to them. Here is to be found the 
height of Socrates' mysticism, a mysticism in which the 
very secret of the universe, the very goal of science is 
revealed only to philosophic contemplation. 1 Socrates 
had in earlier days studied the Ionic science which por- 
trays the world as a blind play of mechanical processes and 
we have what seem to be his own words of disappointment 
at the dreadful and cheerless picture given by this theory 
of the world. To him, as to every deeply religious and 
mystical temperament, such a world could not be satis- 
fying. Hence the revolt in which he goes to the other 
extreme; where the world is pictured as in very essence 
good and divine, where the eternal drama of nature can 
be understood only by those with the powers to see, not 
with the eyes of sense but with the ecstasy of the saint, 
the heavenly vision. But notice that this divine object 
is not the god of the folk, the god of the ordinary worship- 
per but the god of the seer, the god of the mystic saint and 

1 Here Socrates shows the influence upon him of the Eleatics rather 
than of the Pythagoreans. 



138 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

philosopher, the god whom to see man must have the 
amor dei intelleclualis. 

Had Socrates taught nothing further regarding the na- 
ture of the good he would hardly have belonged at all in 
the history of ethics. But thus far we have spoken only 
of Socrates the Eleatic moralist, and there remains to de- 
scribe Socrates the Pythagorean moralist. This I shall do 
briefly in terms of modern psychology. The good is not 
mere skill or efficiency as it would have to be in order to 
be taught as the sophists claim to teach it. For example, 
a murderer might be as skillful as the physician or the 
sanitary engineer. On the contrary the good is mental 
discipline, or character. In man there are numerous 
instincts and these conflict in many ways. Each instinct 
regarded by itself is neither good nor bad; for each is a 
purely blind impulse. Hence it is only the rivalry or con- 
flict between the instincts that raises the moral issue. To 
illustrate, I tend to fight and lord it over my enemy, but 
I tend also to avoid danger and this I can do by submitting 
to him. Which shall I do, for it is impossible to do both? 
Here first arises a moral question. How would Socrates 
answer such questions? Not, as we have seen, by declar- 
ing some of our instincts to be good and others to be bad ; 
but by pointing out that we must reconcile our instincts 
by giving to each free play as far as such freedom is con- 
sistent with the well-being of the entire man or by keeping 
each held strictly to its proper function in the enterprise 
of life. But who is to do this ruling and peacemaking? 
Certainly not the blind impulse of the moment, but our 
intellect. In short, the moral man is the man ruled by 
reason rather than by impulse, the man who deals justly 
with all his instinctive tendencies, the man who prevents 
any one of these instincts becoming his master and there- 
fore the tyrant over the other instincts. Socrates' favorite 
name for goodness is justice, a name that is quite appro- 






GREAT THINKERS OF THE ATHENIAN PERIOD 139 

priate, for goodness is justice within the commonwealth of 
a man's total nature. The Pythagorean name is also 
appropriate, the harmony of the soul, for a good man, is 
a man at peace with himself. He is temperate, he is 
courageous, he is wise. He is the first, when appetite sub- 
mits to reason. He is the second, when he is guided by 
reason in determining what is to be feared and what is not. 
He is the third, when reason is the ruler over all his im- 
pulses. Finally, he is just when his total nature is thus in 
harmony. In contrast the bad or unhealthy soul, the un- 
just man, is he who allows one of his appetites or baser im- 
pulses to lord it over the reason and thus to be life's moral 
tyrant. 
4. Plato. 1 — In passing to the philosophical doctrines 

1 Born 427 B. C, died 347 B. C. A man of noble family whose 
ancestors and relatives had played an important part in the days 
of Athens' greatest glory. He was only in early manhood when 
Socrates died and it is doubtful how far we may call him the im- 
mediate pupil of Socrates. In any case Socrates was known to him 
from his earliest childhood and his near relatives were ardent admirers 
of the great master. After the death of Socrates Plato did much 
travelling which took him as far as Sicily. In these travels he became 
acquainted directly with leaders in Greek thought, Eleatics in Me- 
gara and Pythagoreans in Magna Grsecia. Both parties influenced 
him greatly. He returned to Athens profoundly interested in mathe- 
matics, astronomy and dialectics, or logic. But up to this time he 
lacked a philosophy that can be distinctly called Platonic and his 
literary work, including his greatest masterpieces, had been done 
seemingly with the purpose of extolling his own family, of revealing 
Socrates to the world and of indulging a wonderful dramatic talent. 
Upon his return he conceived the plan of founding a school in Athens 
after his own pedagogical beliefs. He was already familiar with the 
school of Euclid in Megara and with the school of Isocrates in Athens. 
To the latter the school of Plato of course becomes a rival establish- 
ment though it would seem a friendly rival. Moreover, the custom 
was rapidly growing for young men from distant parts of Greece to 
come to Athens to be instructed. Herein the fourth century differed 
from the fifth, for in the latter century teachers came to Athens rather 



140 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

of Plato we have come to the thoughts of another genera- 
tion in the Athenian period; for we have passed from the 
fifth century and have come to the fourth, to the year 
368 B. C. thirty years after the death of Socrates. 1 Plato 
is now a man sixty years of age and he has been carrying 
on the work of directing his school for approximately 
twenty years. These twenty years and the twenty that 
immediately follow them mark the turning point in the 
history of Greek thought. Up to this point there has been 
steady progress; but from this point the decline begins, 
for in Plato we meet Greek philosophical genius at its 
highest point of achievement. Unfortunately a full and 
direct account of the instruction and research proceeding in 
the Academy during these years has not come down to us 
nor has a full and systematic account of the teachings of 
the master, its founder. What we have instead of such 
direct accounts are but indirect and casual statements, 
a few echoes, as it were, of the mighty industry hidden 

than pupils; but now the pupils also are coming. The founding of 
Plato's school, the Academy, was an important event not only in 
the history of education but also in the history of Europe. The 
school became a genuine seat of scientific research where important 
further steps were taken to solve the problems of mathematics and 
astronomy and seriously to begin the classification of animal and 
plant life. Out of it came virtually the famous treatise of Euclid 
and the basis of the later Greek astronomy. Moreover, the school 
was important because of the type of students it attracted. Many 
of these were men that were to be rulers and legislators in many parts 
of the Greek world. Thus it was both theoretically and practically 
a school of political science. 

All of Plato's published writings have come down to us; but we 
quite lack his lectures which no doubt would give us a different 
picture of the thinker and his doctrines from that given in books 
meant chiefly for the intellectual public. These writings, Plato's 
Dialogues, form one of the grandest prose collections that the genius 
of man has ever produced; and they bid fair to be read, studied and 
enjoyed as long as man remains civilized. 

1 The probable date of Plato's Thesetetus. 



GREAT THINKERS OF THE ATHENIAN PERIOD 141 

behind the walls. That is, we have the casual publications 
of Plato himself dealing with a few matters concerning 
which he wished to take the entire learned world into his 
confidence and we have the casual remarks and criticisms 
of Aristotle and others bearing on the teachings of Plato 
within the school. However, we have enough evidence 
to give at least a probable answer to the question: What 
were the interests of Plato, to what influences from others 
was he indebted, what were the fields of his research, and 
what were the general results of his thought and investi- 
gation? 

In the first place, we must not think of the Academy as 
a school of philosophy in the narrow sense but as a genuine 
university in the modern sense; and we must not think of 
Plato as a professor of philosophy but as the president and 
director of a university, and perhaps the greatest univer- 
sity president, or rector that the world has ever possessed. 
He founded the school and managed its affairs ; he directed 
its research and instruction which not only dealt with all 
the learning of the day but was adding important newly 
discovered information to every department of Greek sci- 
ence; finally he himself by his own thought and research 
was contributing to this remarkable progress, winning for 
himself a name immortal as long as men study logic, 
mathematics, astronomy and philosophy. The research 
that he directed and in which he took part extended from 
mathematical and astronomical investigation to the so- 
lution of the political problems of the time; and the phi- 
losophy that he taught came not only from a vast experi- 
ence in the field of science and of human affairs but also 
from the fact that Plato's entire intellectual environment 
compelled him to be a philosopher, we might almost add, 
even against his will. 

5. Plato's contribution to science. — Before considering 
Plato's place in the history of European philosophy let 



•") 



142 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

us briefly sum up his probable contributions to mathe- 
matics, astronomy and political science. It is highly 
probable that the mathematics contained in the famous 
work of Euclid came largely from the Academy and in no 
small part through Plato. Again, we know from Plato's 
own writings that he was thinking out the solution of 
problems that lead directly to the discovery of the calcu- 
lus. Indeed there are probably only four or five names of 
mathematical discoverers that stand between Plato on 
the one hand and Newton and Leibniz, the discoverers of 
the calculus, on the other hand; and mark that two or three 
of these names belong to a time as recent as the seven- 
teenth century. 1 In astronomy we have directly from his 
writings hints of his teaching in the Academy. It may be 
going too far to say that Plato is the father of the helio- 
centric hypothesis; but it is not going too far to say that 
this theory has in him a forefather. For example, not only 
did he teach with the Pythagoreans that the earth is a 
sphere, that it is a planet, and that it revolves about some 
central body; but he looked forward to finding through the 
discovery of some planetary system a way of accounting 
for the irregular motions of the planets by reducing these 
motions to circular motions seen from a moving earth. 
In political science Plato was the most influential man of 
his day. The Academy was the school of statesmen and 
legislators and through these his pupils Plato seems to 
have exerted a marked influence upon the legal thinking 
of the time and thus to have been one of the authors of 
Hellenistic law. Hellenistic legal customs and thought 
not unlikely in turn influenced the legal colonial customs 
and also the legal thought of Rome in later days and 
so we can with probability speak of the Academy as 
one of the ultimate sources of Roman and so of modern 
jurisprudence. If the future research of scholars jus- 
1 Cavalieri, Wallis, Barrow. 



GREAT THINKERS OF THE ATHENIAN PERIOD 143 

tifies these inferences * regarding the influence of Plato 
in his own day and the contributions made by him to the 
science of all time; it will prove no exaggeration for us 
to have said that in public affairs, in science and in 
education Plato was one of the most influential men 
that ever lived. And we have not yet stated his con- 
tribution to philosophic thought! 

6. The Platonic philosophy. — The teachers of Plato in 
philosophy were pre-eminently Socrates and after Socrates' 
death the Eleatic and Socratic philosophers in Megara 
and the western Pythagoreans in Sicily. In other words, 
Plato was very closely related to the same major move- 
ments in Greek philosophy in the fourth century as was 
Socrates in the fifth century; but the new century had 
brought with it many changes. Socrates' rather crude 
doctrine of " forms" required either to be discarded or to 
be thought through. For example, if there are forms such 
as the triangle, are there forms also of hair, of dirt and of 
any object that you may mention? Again, are there forms 
of the forms, that is, does the triangle itself participate 
in a higher form? Still again, what is the relation between 
these mysteriousiorms in which objects participate and the 
objects themselves? Do the forms literally constitute an 
existent world by themselves? Finally, what is a form? 
Briefly stated, the Greek answer to these and related 
questions constitute what we to-day call the logic of predi- 
cation and the logic of classes. In other words, these Greek 
thinkers were struggling with problems whose solution is 
part of the science of logic; and the world owes to Plato 
and to his pupil Aristotle virtually all the knowledge of 
logic possessed by Europe until in the nineteenth century 
logical discovery really once more began. 

The growth of logic is historically a matter of great 

1 Of Professor Burnet, to whose work on Greek Philosophy this 
chapter is directly indebted. 



144 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

philosophical importance. Our entire conception of the 
nature of science depends upon our knowledge of logical 
theory; for our logical theory is little more than a summing 
up of our scientific experience and of our reflective insight 
into the nature of the enterprise upon which we as scien- 
tists have been engaged. If then our logic is restricted as 
was Plato's and Aristotle's to the logic of predication and 
to that of classes, it follows that we shall think of the 
business of science as finding the predicates or forms of 
things or virtually their definition and the forms of these 
forms or virtually classification. That is to say, the 
business of science is to define and to classify, to do for the 
world at large what the morphologist does for the world 
of animals and plants. That is, the morphologist studies 
animals and tries to discover what constitutes the type, and 
in turn he studies these types and tries thereby to discover 
the higher types and so finally to get the system that we 
call the classification of animals. Thus if science is limited 
to definition and classification, it becomes literally a uni- 
versal morphology. 

True as it is that part of the business of science is to 
define and to classify, as biology, chemistry and mineral- 
ogy witness to-day; still this is evidently not the whole 
enterprise of science, as even Greek mathematics itself 
witnesses. However, the strong impression that this is 
the whole of science became, from these days in the Acad- 
emy, part of European philosophic thought and continued 
to be a part until the rapid growth of modern science in 
recent centuries made it evident that such an hypothesis 
of the nature of science is altogether inadequate. Now 
the interesting fact that follows from this belief that defi- 
nition and classification constitute science is the resulting 
conception of the universe, a conception that was to play 
a major part in European thought from the time of Plato 
until in the seventeenth century science returned again 



GREAT THINKERS OF THE ATHENIAN PERIOD 145 

to the world conception of Democritus. If definition and 
classification are all of science and therefore if we are to 
conceive the universe in their terms alone; then we must 
picture the world as a great hierarchy of forms extending 
from the concrete individual things about us, the objects 
of our sense perception, through the higher and higher 
forms up to the highest form, the ultimate form or funda- 
mental principle of all things. That is, the world is a vast 
classified system similar to the classification of the animals, 
except that the classes are themselves thought of as things, 
forms or principles; and each object is what it is because 
of, and owes its existence to, the forms in which it partici- 
pates or that are working as secret powers within it. This 
world-picture may properly be called the feudalistic con- 
ception of the world; and, as we have stated, it came from 
Socrates, Plato and Aristotle and remained a typical Euro- 
pean world-conception until a new civilization in modern 
times brought into existence a new science, a new logic 
and a new world-picture. 

7. Plato's defense of science against the Eleatics of 
Megara. — Closely related to Plato's logical studies was 
his answer to the nihilism of the school of Megara. It is 
characteristic of most periods in European thought even 
to our own day to have the tradition of Parmenides repre- 
sented by some thinkers who maintain, as he did, an ex- 
treme monism, or the doctrine that all is one and that 
science is therefore fundamentally erroneous. Such monists 
are so hypnotized by the thought, "the world is one," that 
they rest intellectually satisfied with some type of mystical 
contemplation or ineffable philosophy and at the same time 
they endeavor to show the futility of the efforts of science 
to study the world in its parts, to find the elements of these 
parts and in general to investigate nature inductively and 
analytically. In Plato's day Parmenides lived again in 
the Eleatics of Megara. As Zeno before them had shown 



146 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

that motion was impossible, so they now go logically 
deeper and show that any instance of predication or classi- 
fication whatsoever is self -contradictory. What is, is; 
and therefore when you say anything further about an 
object either you are merely repeating that it is what it is, 
or you are saying that the object is something that it is 
not. For example, if you call two objects horses, you are 
at once involved in the contradiction, these objects are 
both two and one, are both alike and different, or again 
are each exclusively and precisely what it is and yet are 
both horses. Plato at once shows that such a nihilist 
annihilates himself, for the moment he opens his mouth 
he himself does precisely what he condemns science for 
doing, namely, he predicates. But of course it is not 
enough to split hairs with such a monist, for science has to 
show the source of his quite honest difficulties and to 
make clear the true nature of her enterprise. Thus Plato 
was called upon to analyze predication and to show how 
two objects can share the same predicate. This he did 
and in so doing be became again a founder of the elemen- ' 
tary logic of predication and of classes. 1 

8. In Plato's philosophy mathematics is the fundamen- 
tal science. — Still, it is not Plato's logic that makes him 
seem almost a modern philosopher, rather it is the place 
he believed to be held by mathematics in the hierarchy of 
the sciences. We shall see in the next chapter how Aris- J 
totle regarded biology as the fundamental science and in ; 
later chapters how this Aristotelian doctrine controlled 
European thought down to the sixteenth century when 
Europe again came to believe, as did Plato, that the world 
is fundamentally a mathematical world, and that mathe- 
matics is therefore the fundamental science. 2 This fact 

1 The familiar logic of our elementary text-books. 

2 Thus it is a rule of modern philosophy that the scientist should 
always endeavor to reduce the problem he is trying to solve to a 



GREAT THINKERS OF THE ATHENIAN PERIOD 147 

in modern European history and the fact that Plato as a 
philosopher also believed that the world is essentially 
or fundamentally mathematical, make him the most 
modern thinker of the Greeks and make modern scientists 
Platonists to an extent that few of them apprehend. 
Indeed, it is this doctrine and the doctrines aforemen- 
tioned that deserve especially the name Platonic realism; 
for by realism is meant (1) the battle for science against 
mystical monism, (2) the making of logic the pre-eminent 
interest and labor of the philosopher, and (3) the belief 
that mathematics is the fundamental science or that the 
world is fundamentally mathematicaL Of all thinkers 
who consistently uphold these three enterprises or prin- 
ciples, Plato is the master. 

9. The world-soul. — Still, Plato was not altogether 
modern; for compared with Democritus he was in some 
things a reactionary, as was Democritus when compared 
in other things with the Pythagoreans. Expressed in 
simplest form, the modern believes that the world is a sort 
of perpetual motion machine, that motion is constant and 
eternal, that the world is not in need of entities that can 
keep giving it new supplies of energy. The atomists of 
the school of Abdera believed much the same, for this 
school taught as a basic premise that the atoms are moving 
in all directions through space and they presupposed no 
other source or control of motion. In contrast, Plato be- 
lieved in a doctrine that was a direct descendant of primi- 
tive animism. The mark that distinguishes the living 
creature is self-motion and the entity within the body 
that makes this self-motion possible is the soul. In other 
words, the soul is a creator of energy and were it not for 

mathematical problem; and it is certainly one of the wonders of the 
world that man has in the past three centuries succeeded in reducing 
countless problems to mathematical ones and has thus succeeded 
in solving these problems in terms of mathematics, until to-day 
mathematics is the queen of the sciences. 



148 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

such creators of energy motion would cease. Moreover, 
what is true of the living body is in turn true of nature, 
the universe about us and above us, for unless there is a 
world-soul there would be no source of the world's motion. 
This world-soul may be called the god of Plato. 

10. Plato's cosmology. — We may now consider the 
foundation of Plato's cosmology. The ultimate sources 
of the world are three: first, the ultimate chaos, the un- 
formed matter, which in Plato's thought seems to be equiv- 
alent to what we call space; second, the forms, that is, the 
fundamental mathematical principles of science; third, 
god, the world-soul who as the source of motion makes 
chaos become the cosmos by exemplifying mathematical 
law. A possible illustration of this none too clear doctrine 
is the following imaginary modern analogy. First, think 
of the universal ether of modern physics, the medium of 
light, electricity and other energies, but think of it as 
absolutely without disturbance or motion of any kind. Let 
us call this Plato's chaos. In terms of modern physics 
there would then be not only no light, heat or electricity 
but also no matter, no chemical elements, for matter is 
electricity, a disturbance in the ether. Second, think of 
the laws or doctrines that we may call mathematical 
physics. Let us call these Plato's forms. Third, think of 
a power that can set up disturbances in the ether, an imag- 
inary substitute for Plato's world-soul. Now to have the 
world, the world of light, electricity and matter, come into 
being this power has but to set up in the ether disturb- 
ances that are in accord with the principles of mathe- 
matical physics; or put conversely, given the world of 
physical science we can trace it back to three sources ; the 
ether, the mathematical laws of physics and the prime- 
mover who sets up disturbances in the ether that exem- 
plify mathematical physics. 1 

1 In this cosmology also Plato is a Pythagorean. 



GREAT THINKERS OF THE ATHENIAN PERIOD 149 

Finally, we may indicate Plato's position in the history 
of theology by building the following scale. The first 
position, atheism or pantheism, is held by Democritus 
in his doctrine that nature has no creator other than itself. 
The world is, in modern phrase, a perpetual motion ma- 
chine. The second position is held by Plato. A god or 
world-soul is needed to be the source of motion in the 
world. The third position is held by later Greek Platonists 
who make God the source not only of the world's motion 
but also of the laws or principles of science, that is, of all 
that is essential to transforming chaos into a cosmos. 
In short, they identify God with two of Plato's world prin- 
ciples. The fourth position is held in Christian theology 
when God is thought of as creating the world out of noth- 
ing, when He thus becomes in men's minds the only source 
of the world. In short, God is here the author of all three 
of Plato's world principles. 

For further study read: 

Encycl. Brit., 11th ed., arts. Socrates and Plato; 
Taylor, A. E., Plato, 1909; 

Burnet, History of Greek Philosophy, 105-192, 205-233; 
Bakewell, Source Book in Ancient Philosophy, 86-103, 

148-216; 
Plato's Euthyphron, Apology, Crito, Phsedo, Symposium, 

Protagoras, Republic, Thesetetus, Parmenides, Sophist 

and Statesman; 
Taylor, Aristotle on His Predecessors. 
For more extensive study read: 

Burnet, History of Greek Philosophy, 205-350; 

Nettleship, R. L., Lectures on Plato's Republic, 1901; 

Windelband, Platon, 3te Aufl. 1901; 

Pater, W., Plato and Platonism, 1893; 

Adam, J., Vitality of Platonism, 1911; 

Plato's Dialogues; 

Dunning, W. A., History of Political Theories, Ancient and 

Medieval, 1902, 1-48. 



CHAPTER XIV 

THE GREAT THINKERS OF THE ATHENIAN PERIOD! 
ARISTOTLE 1 

1. Introductory. — To have their names become house- 
hold words has not commonly been the lot of philoso- 
phers. " Yet there are a few philosophers whose influence 
on thought and language has been so extensive that no one 
who reads can be ignorant of their names, and that every 
man who speaks the language of educated Europeans is 
constantly using their vocabulary. Among this few Aris- 
totle holds not the lowest place. We have all heard of 
him, as we have all heard of Homer. He has left his im- 
press so firmly on theology that many of the formulae of 

1 Born 384 B. C. in Stagira, died 322 in Chalcis in Eubcea. Son 
of Nicomachus, court physician to Amyntus II, king of Macedonia. 
Came to Athens at the age of eighteen and entered Plato's Academy 
where he remained for twenty years a member of the scientific group 
gathered around the master. After Plato's death Aristotle spent 
several years in the Troad in Asia Minor. In 343 he received the call 
to be tutor to the prince Alexander, later Alexander the Great. In 
335 he returned to Athens and founded a separate school from the 
Academy. This school has ever since been called the Lyceum from 
the building in which it was housed; and it has been called also the 
Peripatetic school from the fact that Aristotle instructed in the 
peripatos or covered portico of the building. Until the death of 
Alexander Aristotle remained occupied with the management of his 
school in the Lyceum. After the death of Alexander a charge against 
him similar to that brought against Socrates, compelled him to flee 
to Chalcis where he died the following year at the age of sixty-two. 

His published books have almost entirely been lost; and with the 
exception of his essay on the Constitution of Athens only the edited 
lecture notes of the master have come down to us. 

150 




GREAT THINKERS OF THE ATHENIAN PERIOD 151 

the Churches are unintelligible without acquaintance with 
his conception of the universe. If we are interested in the 
growth of modern science we shall readily discover for 
ourselves that some knowledge of Aristotelianism is neces- 
sary for the understanding of Bacon and Galilei and the 
other great anti- Aristotelians who created 'the modern 
scientific' view of Nature. If we turn to the imaginative 
literature of the modern languages, Dante is a sealed book, 
and many a passage of Chaucer and Shakespeare and Mil- 
ton is half unmeaning to us unless we are at home in the 
outlines of Aristotle's philosophy. And if we turn to 
ordinary language, we find that many of the familiar turns 
of modern speech cannot be fully understood without a 
knowledge of the doctrines they were first forged to ex- 
press. An Englishman who speaks of the ■ golden mean ' or 
of 'liberal education,' or contrasts the 'matter' of a work 
of literature with Its 'form/ or the 'essential' features of a 
situation or a scheme of policy with its 'accidents,' or 'the- 
ory' with 'practice,' is using words which derive their 
significance from the part they play in the vocabulary of 
Aristotle." 1 

2. The relation of the philosophy of Aristotle to that 
of Plato and Democritus. — A study of Aristotle reveals 
two philosophies. In the one philosophy Aristotle is the 
loyal follower and successor of Plato and is an important 
contributor to the Platonic tradition. In the other philos- 
ophy Aristotle is a rebel rejecting Platonism. Judged 
from a modern point of view Aristotle is progressive in 
his Platonism and is reactionary in his Aristotelianism. 
Judged from the standpoint of the historical evolution of 
modern thought Aristotle in becoming the great teacher 
of Europe misled the intellectual enterprise of Europe 
for many centuries until in the last three centuries science 
has rejected his leadership and has returned to the philoso- 
1 Taylor, Aristotle, p. 7. 



152 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

phy of Democritus and to that of Plato. Democritus was 
modern in his mechanical atomism and in his doctrine of 
representative perception. Plato was modern in giving 
to mathematics the position of fundamental science and 
in accepting those astronomical hypotheses which were 
leading directly toward the heliocentric astronomy. Aris- 
totle was not modern, but from the modern point of view 
was reactionary, in rejecting a mechanical or mathematical 
conception of the universe and in offering mankind in its 
place a biological, or vitalistic conception; and he was 
reactionary in rejecting the Pythagorean astronomy and 
in returning to the doctrine that the earth is the motion- 
less center of the universe. Again, Aristotle was not mod- 
ern but reactionary in rejecting the evolutionary hypoth- 
esis of Ionic .science, the hypothesis that the universe 
and the entire present order of existent entities have 
arisen out of relatively chaotic conditions, and in teaching 
instead of this evolutionary doctrine the doctrine of the 
eternity of the present astronomical world and of the 
present types of earth's living and lifeless objects. 

Because ancient and medieval Europe adopted Aristote- 
lianism the three hundred years from 1600 to our own time 
have been an era of struggle in which the modern thinker 
has had to outgrow Aristotle and fight the Aristotelian 
tradition. Perhaps this fact will be recognized, if I add 
that the two greatest anti-Aristotelians in modern times 
are also two of the most prominent men in the history of 
modern science, Galilei and Darwin. Of course, in calling 
Aristotle a reactionary we must remember we are parti- 
sans and not historians. As historians we should add the 
statement that we were judging merely from the point of 
view of the past three centuries of science. The science of 
future centuries may return to Aristotle. At least Aris- 
totelianism is still with us and there are to-day signs of 
rebellion against modern mechanism. However, these 



GREAT THINKERS OF THE ATHENIAN PERIOD 153 

are matters to be discussed later. At present it is enough 
that we appreciate first the marvellous influence of Aris- 
totle upon European thought to modern times, as com- 
pared with the influence of Plato and Democritus, and 
second the return of modern thought to the leadership of 
these two men whom Aristotle in great part supplanted. 

3. Aristotle the Platonist.— We have seen first that 
the Socratic and Platonic doctrine of ideas leads the phi- 
losopher to conceive the work of science to be the task of 
defining and classifying the world's objects, and second 
that this doctrine of ideas is in part responsible for the 
rapid advance in the fourth century of the logic of defini- 
tion, of predication and of classes. Precisely how much 
logic Aristotle learned in the Academy and how much he 
discovered and thought out independently we may never 
know; but in any case Aristotle gave the schools of Europe 
their text-book in logic for all the intervening time from his 
day to our own. 1 In other words, Aristotle gave to Europe 
essentially the logical doctrine of definition, of predication 
and of classes employed ever since; and he taught Europe 
that to define and classify are the chief business of science, 2 
until a new age and a new civilization gave Europe other 
masters. 

There are other features of the Aristotelian logic be- 
sides the logic of definition and classification. One that 
must be mentioned is his belief in the thoroughly deductive 
nature of scientific inference, and therefore of science, a doc- 
trine that is called rationalism. According to this teach- 
ing science is not only a deduction from some finite number 

1 A few additions to the Aristotelian logic have of course been made 
in the traditional logic. Some of these were made by the Stoic 
logicians in the later periods of Greek philosophy. 

2 Therefore, it is the duty of every student of European thought 
to become acquainted with the Aristotelian logic as it is given in 
some one of the numerous elementary text-books of logic used in the 
schools of Europe and America. 



154 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

of ultimate premises but these ultimate premises are axio- 
matic, or intuitively known truths. Thus there is held 
out to the scientist the hope of making his teaching an 
infallible and final body of demonstrated truth, instead 
of the warning that, do his best, his doctrine is but the 
result of an experimental, or trial and error process, a 
result which is to be entertained only tentatively and 
which he must expect to see outgrown in the course of 
further research. Indeed Aristotle probably regarded his 
own work as the ne plus ultra of science. 

Aristotle was a Platonist also in rejecting the mechan- 
istic explanation of nature and in adopting the doctrine 
of forms. The ultimate stuff of which all things are com- 
posed is not capable of itself developing into the cosmos 
and into the organized objects we behold about us as the 
eastern atomists taught; for there must be working in 
nature besides the mechanical and the chance configura- 
tions of clouds of atoms genuinely formative principles. 
Since then matter can of itself do nothing but can only 
under the influence of the forms become a cosmos; the 
chief, if not the only object of scientific study is these 
forms, or formative principles. In this common doctrine, 
however, Aristotle differs radically from Plato, who re- 
garded these forms as essentially mathematical, by regard- 
ing them as essentially biological or animistic. In short, 
Aristotle was a Platonist who, because of his interest in 
biology, turned vitalist. 

4. Aristotle the vitalist. — Plato was at heart a math- 
ematician, Aristotle a biologist. Therefore we must 
understand Aristotle's biological bias in order to under- 
stand what is probably its peculiar consequence, the Aris- 
totelian doctrine of forms. To do so let us consider the 
following commonplace facts of life. 

The living entity is remarkably unlike the lifeless, in 
its origin, growth and reproduction. The acorn is the 



GREAT THINKERS OF THE ATHENIAN PERIOD 155 

offspring of the oak and of nothing else. The acorn is 
fated to grow into the oak and into nothing else no matter 
how closely it may resemble other seeds. When the grow- 
ing acorn reaches the oak stage, it stops its transformation 
as though this were the goal it had been seeking from the 
beginning; and now as an oak it produces other acorns 
which also are predestined to the same career as that 
through which the parent oak has passed. What is true 
of the acorn is true in general of every living seed or egg 
and of every living creature in its development from the 
seed or egg to the mature form. Hence if in our theory of 
life we keep close to life as the layman observes it, we shall 
have to make somewhat the following statements: Every 
seed has in it a principle that determines its growth and 
the goal of that growth; every seed is the offspring of a 
parent that has already reached this goal and the parent 
provides in the seed the principle by which the seed in 
turn is predestined to the same goal as that reached by its 
parent ; finally the stuff out of which different living crea- 
tures are composed shows no such specialization, for the 
food of one plant or animal is shared in common by many 
other types of plants and animals. In other words, this 
food is an unformed stuff which each living creature as- 
similates and transforms into its own tissue according to 
the principle working within the seed. For example, 
acorns seem to absorb much the same food as do the chest- 
nuts and other similar trees, but the acorn transforms this 
raw material into an oak tree and the other seeds into 
trees after their kind. Again a kitten and a puppy both 
drink milk but this food is transformed by the one into the 
tissues of the cat and by the other into the tissues of the 
dog. A similar story awaits us as we proceed to describe 
that remarkable feature of life which we call mind. Minds 
not only develop from seeds but exhibit the same faith- 
fulness to type. Again minds have the same remarkable 



156 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

capacity for predetermining the product of minds that the 
mature creature has in predetermining the character of 
its offspring. For example, the idea in the mind of the 
sculptor predetermines the form of the statue, or the idea 
in the mind of the craftsman the outcome of his handiwork, 
or finally the problem before the mathematician prede- 
termines the character of the resulting thought, the solu- 
tion of his problem. Formulated as principles these facts 
may be described thus : Every living entity develops from 
an unformed state by means of a form working within 
it, and every living entity is indebted for this form to 
a parent that has already attained the formed stage. 
Nowhere do we find crude matter capable of develop- 
ing without the influence of such a form into living 
creatures. 1 

So far we might call Aristotle merely a biologist of what 
we to-day call the vitalistic school, but he does not stop 
there. What is true of life is true of all nature, and these 
principles of life are universal philosophical principles. 
All motion or change in the universe is a transformation, 
an evolution under the stimulus of an indwelling form or 
of a form acting from without; and this stimulus must 
come from that which has itself already reached the formed 
state. Further, these forms constitute a hierarchy, for 
one stage may be but the raw material or potential stage 
of some yet higher stage; that is, life may give life to life- 
less matter but this lifeless matter is not itself wholly 
unformed, for it may be earth or water or fire, in other 
words, forms of matter, and again our minds may trans- 
form what is far from lacking all form, as they do in build- 
ing a temple out of cut stone. 

1 Though Aristotle did make the unfortunate mistake that lower 
forms of life could develop out of, for instance, mud or putrefying 
meat under the influence of the sunshine, as do seemingly frogs and 
flies. 



GREAT THINKERS OF THE ATHENIAN PERIOD 157 

These principles have or suggest a number of conse- 
quences. First, the higher, or the formed must be as truly 
ultimate as is matter, for matter cannot change without 
the influence of forms. Second, every species or type must 
be eternal, for matter cannot evolve without the influence 
of that which is already formed; and therefore there can 
be no genetic evolution from less organized types to more 
organized types such as biology to-day believes to have 
taken place. In short, the present order of the universe 
is eternal. Third, there must be one or more highest forms ; 
and as these can develop no farther, they are pure forms 
and not the matter, or potential stage of some yet higher 
type. Aristotle decides that there is but one such highest, 
or pure form, God, who is thus the prime form, or mover 
of the universe, the eternal source of all stimulation and 
of all resulting transformation. 1 Briefly put, nature would 
stop without God's presence acting upon it. Fourth, 
there extends from God to the lowest organized matter 
a scale of intervening forms. Finally, two dogmas of 
Aristotle should be added to these four consequences. 
Aristotle believed that totally unformed matter is no- 
where to be found 2 and he seemed to regard the highest 
reason exhibited in man as the highest type of organized 

1 This is a principle with consequences of great historical and 
philosophical importance both in the centuries immediately following 
Aristotle and in later centuries. It implies that the world is not a 
perpetual motion machine. It implies that nature depends directly 
upon the supernatural to keep it transforming. In short, it flatly 
denies naturalism, the doctrine of modern as well as of Ionic science. 
Thus in the history, of science this inference of Aristotle was a dis- 
tinctly reactionary movement, a movement back toward primitive 
thought, and a movement that led to the greatest philosophical 
battle in all history, the struggle between medieval Aristotelian 
science and modern science. 

2 That is, earth, air, fire and water cannot be analyzed physically. 
This dogma tended to impede the early efforts to analyze matter, 
efforts that in time resulted in the founding of chemical science. 



158 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

matter. From the latter, it follows that God is pure 
thought or reason. 

5. The Aristotelian cosmology. — " There is no part of 
Aristotle's system which has been more carefully thought 
out than his physics; at the same time it is almost wholly 
on account of his physical doctrines that his long ascend- 
ency over thought is so much to be regretted. Aristotle's 
qualifications as a man of science have been much over- 
rated. In one department, that of descriptive natural 
history, he shows himself a master of minute and careful 
observation who could obtain unqualified praise from so 
great a naturalist as Darwin. But in astronomy and phys- 
ics proper his inferiority in mathematical thinking and his 
dislike for mechanical ways of explaining facts put him at 
a great disadvantage, as compared with Plato and Plato's 
Pythagorean friends. Thus his authority was for centuries 
one of the chief influences which prevented the develop- 
ment of astronomy on right lines. Plato had himself 
both taught the mobility of the earth and denied correctly 
that the earth is at the center of the universe, and the 
' Copernican ' hypothesis in astronomy probably originated 
in the Academy. Aristotle, however, insists on the central 
position of the earth, and violently attacks Plato for 
believing in its motion. It is equally serious that he in- 
sists on treating the so-called ' four elements ' as ultimately 
unanalyzable forms of matter, though Plato had not only 
observed that so far from being the A B C of nature they 
do not deserve to be called even 'syllables,' but had also 
definitely put forward the view that it is the geometrical 
structure of the ' corpuscles ' of body upon which sensible 
qualities depend. Aristotle reverts to the older theory 
that the differences between one 'element' and another 
are qualitative differences of a sensible kind." 1 

The earth is the motionless center of the universe. 
1 Taylor, Aristotle, pp. 51 f . 



GREAT THINKERS OF THE ATHENIAN PERIOD 159 

About it revolve spheres that carry the moon, sun and 
other planets and the stars; and if we assume these spheres 
to be numerous enough, the seeming irregularity in the 
motions of the planets and stars can be explained. This 
doctrine of the heavenly spheres was of course older than 
Aristotle but Aristotle seems to have been the author of 
the unfortunate hypothesis that these spheres were ma- 
terial entities and not merely mathematical abstractions. 
The world above the moon is essentially a changeless 
world, a world more divine than the world below and quite 
incorruptible; and to make this seem more consistent 
Aristotle teaches that its matter is different from earth, 
air, fire and water found here below the moon, for the 
spheres are made of a fifth substance. 1 This doctrine of a 
non-earthly substance and of the incorruptibility of the 
heavens seems distinctly reactionary when compared with 
the Ionic astronomy; and it became one of the obstacles 
that the new astronomy had to overcome in the time of 
Galilei. It made the world of astronomy a fundamentally 
different world for physics to explain from the world form- 
ing man's earthly environment; whereas the great tri- 
umphs of modern astronomy have been due to the philo- 
sophic hypothesis that the same physical science holds in 
both realms and hence that the starry world is a world of 
change and evolution no less than is the world of our 
immediate environment. 2 

Another historically important but unfortunate Aris- 
totelian doctrine, 3 closely related to the foregoing hypothe- 
sis, is that the perfect, eternal and fundamental form of 

1 Hence the word "quintessence," the name of this substance. 

2 Immediately beyond the farthest sphere is God, the source of 
all motion within the world. Thus the supernatural realm and the 
dwelling place of God are identified with the physical heavens and 
remain so identified until modern days. Of course, this doctrine 
also was a return to primitive thought. 

3 That again Galilei was long afterward to disprove. 



160 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

motion is the motion seemingly exhibited by the heavenly- 
spheres, namely, motion in a circle, whereas motion in 
a straight line is essentially earthly and transitory. Plato's 
Academy taught the opposite, and so of course does mod- 
ern science, for motion in a straight line is according to 
the principle of inertia logically fundamental to mechanics 
and to motion in a circle and uninterfered with this motion 
is eternal. 

Finally, one more unfortunate doctrine of Aristotle must 
be mentioned because of its historical importance. This 
doctrine has to do with the nature of space and its limits. 
Aristotle regards space as a container or vessel to be de- 
fined accordingly in terms of its bounds or sides. Thus 
it follows from the very definition of space that space is 
limited or of finite extent. From this in turn Aristotle 
inferred that the farthest heavens are the bounds of space 
and so of the universe in space, and not only that the uni- 
verse is finite but that the earth is literally its center. In 
modern phrase, not only is the solar system geocentric 
but so also is the universe. No wonder that a Europe 
brought up on Aristotle was shocked and even enraged 
to be told in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that 
the universe extended indefinitely in space and that in- 
stead of the earth being the center and a quite important 
part of the world system it is only an infinitesimal speck 
in an infinite world, a world not related to it in any promi- 
nent way. 

6. Aristotle's philosophy of life. — While Aristotle's 
small interest in mathematics hindered him in astronomy, 
his great interest in biology may have helped to make him 
the great moralist that he was. In his ethical writings 
there is evidence of marked philosophical progress beyond 
any study of man's life and its problems which has come 
down to us from the preceding centuries. Indeed so little 
have modern moralists progressed beyond his "Ethics" 



GREAT THINKERS OF THE ATHENIAN PERIOD 161 

that this book still seems to many an excellent elementary 
text-book. In this respect it is comparable to his logical 
treatises. 

The element of progress in Aristotle's moral doctrine that 
perhaps deserves most to be mentioned is the discovery 
that man's nature is fundamental to ethical science. 1 
To use the term with which we have now become familiar, 
the business of the moral and political sciences is to dis- 
cover the highest "form" of humanity, which means a 
form, or nature to which untutored man is capable, or, 
in Aristotle's phrase, to which non-moral man is the 
"matter," to which he has "the potency." The ideal of 
mankind is thus synonymous with "man's true nature," 
and his true nature has to be discovered by studying man. 
What is the true nature of man? Aristotle replies : We see 
it clearest in the most intellectual and the most highly 
socialized life of man. Differently expressed, man is by 
nature intellectual and social; and therefore the ideal 
life is the life of the philosopher, the life of the citizen in a 
free city-state and the life of friendship. Of course, 
modern students of human nature find Aristotle's list of 
man's traits altogether too short and modern moralists 
find many details of his teachings inconsistent with our 
democratic ideals. From our modern point of view its 

1 In more modern terms, man's inborn endowment or instincts 
are at the basis of his moral life, for his moral life has developed out 
of his pre-moral or instinctive life. In this development, however, 
the inborn nature has not disappeared but has simply been redirected 
in some places, being weakened here and strengthened there. The 
nature of man still rules and always will rule mankind, and it will 
determine his moral judgments and be behind his ideals. Hence 
there could be no more absurd psychology or ethics than hedonism 
or any form of the doctrine that man seeks pleasure as such or that 
happiness as such is the goal of man's life. Man's life, even his moral 
life, is as peculiar to him as is the life of a bird to the bird or of the 
cat to the cat. Therefore completely dissociated from the study of 
the peculiar nature of man, moral science is a mere war of words. 



162 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

greatest gap is its deliberate and typically Greek omission 
of the practical life as contrasted with the life of study, 
of politics and of leisure. This was an unfortunate omis- 
sion, because in the days to come the contemplative life 
becomes exaggerated into the only ideal life of man and 
easily becomes not scientific but religious and ecstatic 
contemplation, the meditation of the mystical philosopher 
and of the monastic saint. 

Man's nature is complex and as a result man can rarely 
satisfy all of his tendencies to respond to some given situa- 
tion. His members war with one another; and therefore 
a large part of moral science is concerned with reconciling 
these contestants. Aristotle's solution of this war of 
man's members is the famous doctrine of the golden mean. 
Reason must enter into the struggle between the rival 
tendencies of man's nature and direct his blind impulses 
and appetites. Reason can reconcile them by showing 
the virtues, the golden means. For instance, it reveals 
courage the mean between foolhardiness and cowardice, 
liberality the mean between avarice and extravagance, 
and modesty the mean between bashfulness v and shame- 
lessness. " This mean is not the same for every individual 
and in all circumstances, it is ' relative to ourselves,' and 
it is 'determined by reason, or as a right-minded man 
would determine it.' It is not, however, a matter of sub- 
jective opinion or arbitrary choice:" * It is a matter of 
moral insight and man has to develop in himself such in- 
sight or conscience. Finally, to make man moral, as 
opposed to allowing him to remain instinctive, is not to 
give, as some seem to think, moral instruction merely 
but to build in man by long and constant practice those 
habits which constitute what we call character. In short, 
moral education aims at two things, conscience and 
character. 

1 Thilly, History of Philosophy, p. 90. 






GREAT THINKERS OF THE ATHENIAN PERIOD 163 

For further study read: 

Taylor, A. E., Aristotle (The People's Books) ; 

Wallace, E., Outlines of the Philosophy of Aristotle; 

Welldon, J. E. C, Nicoinachean Ethics, 1906; 

Chase, D. P., Nicomachean Ethics; 

Bakewell, Source Book in Ancient Philosophy, 217-268; 

Johnson, E. H., Argument of Aristotle's Metaphysics, 1906; 

Taylor, Aristotle on his Predecessors. 
For more extensive study read: 

Zeller, E., (transl. Costelloe and Muirhead) Aristotle and the 
earlier Peripatetics, 1897; 

Jones, T. E., Aristotle's Researches in Natural Science, 
1912; 

Aristotle's Politics (transl. by Welldon and also by Jowett) ; 

Dunning, W. A., History of Political Theories, 1902, 49-98. 



CHAPTER XV 

THE HELLENISTIC AND ROMAN PERIODS 

1. Introductory. 1 — By the time of Alexander the Great 
a new Greece had come into being, a spiritually decadent 
Greece. Signs of its coming date back at least to the be- 
ginning of the fourth century, when political vigor and 
solidarity are waning in the Greek city-states, when Greek 
art and literature are losing their classic purity and beauty, 
and when men are becoming more seriously engaged in 
making their peace with the great hidden powers behind 
nature by means of magic and hypnotic suggestion than 
in understanding and controlling the world through science 
and skill. The most civilized part of the world was losing 
its nerve. This loss of nerve, apparent in the year 330 B. 
C., becomes greater and greater in succeeding centuries; 
until it reaches its maximum in the western Mediterranean 
world in the days preceding Charles the Great and in the 
eastern world in the days when the Arab supplants the 
Greco-Roman. 

Such an era of decadence lasting a thousand years was 
extremely complex. It was complex because man and 
society are complex and because the Greek and Roman 
empires included many peoples and cultures and were 
therefore themselves extraordinarily complex. Now in a 
complex entity one part may be changing while another 
is constant or one part may be changing more rapidly 

1 In the first and second sections of this chapter I am indebted 
to Gilbert Murray's brilliant book, Four Stages of Greek Religion, 
Lectures III and IV. 

164 



. 



THE HELLENISTIC AND ROMAN PERIODS 165 



han another or again one part may be improving while 
another is degenerating. All of these characteristics of a 
changing complex entity were present in the intellectual, 
artistic, religious, social and political life of the Mediter- 
ranean world during these one thousand years. In some 
respects we may call the Augustan age the greatest epoch 
in the history of Mediterranean civilization; for it was a 
time of universal peace, a time of widest intercourse and 
closest affiliation between all the peoples of the ancient 
world, and a time of greatest prosperity: but in other 
respects it was far inferior to the Greek city-states of the 
sixth and fifth centuries B. C; for by this time that 
spiritual excellence which had made Greece the light of 
the world had become a tradition, a memory rather than 
a living and energizing present experience. With this 
spiritual and in particular with this intellectual decadence 
we are directly concerned. 

What is spiritual decadence? Spiritual decadence in- 
cludes not only the slowing down and stopping of spiritual 
progress away from primitive thought but also the coming 
back or the spreading to wider circles of society of primi- 
tive customs and beliefs. It involves a loss of intellectual 
self-confidence and ambition, a loss of the habits of research 
and verification, an increase of blind belief and obedience, 
and an increase of suggestibility and hysteria. It involves 
also a similar moral loss, a loss of the ambition, self-confi- 
dence and hopefulness of the pioneer, a loss of the sturdy 
independence and vigilance of the free citizen and a loss 
of self-restraint and social co-operation and efficiency. 
If these are the underlying psychological factors in spirit- 
ual decadence we may expect the following to be the 
phenomena of decadence. The mob mind and its govern- 
ment are more in evidence in politics and in religion. An 
uncritical acceptance of tradition characterizes religion, 
art and science. The religion of the folk becomes increas- 



166 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

ingly a practice of magic and hypnosis and returns to 
animism, myth and hero-worship. Science becomes 
scholastic, that is, it changes from research to mere argu- 
mentation. The strong arm of the despot and military 
leader alone can bring order into the troubled political 
world. The political adventurer wins by becoming the 
favorite of tyrants and not by service to the state and the 
people. On the one hand, luxury increases in the sense 
that men make its enjoyment an almost bestial neglect of 
all other occupation and interests. On the other hand, 
those who seek the better life are obliged to go to the 
opposite extreme, to renounce luxury altogether, to be- 
come puritans and ascetics. Virtue becomes less leading 
an active and useful life as a member of the family, of the 
circle of friends and of the state, and becomes more a mere 
state of mind. The world becomes less a place that re- 
wards virtue, skill, diligence and intelligence. Instead 
it becomes a place that seems governed by the god Chance 
or Fortune rather than by the god Righteousness. In 
such a world the wise man withdraws and seeks to make 
himself independent of fortune. He seeks those treasures 
which the world cannot take away; he sets his heart on a 
world beyond the evil and confusion of earth; and he finds 
at last his peace in God, a peace that passes human under- 
standing. Such was the period that we have now to study. 
What were the causes of this decadence? This is a 
question for the student of general history to answer 
rather than one for the student of philosophy. No doubt 
the former would call our attention to such underlying 
causes as the political and economic conditions of the time 
and he might mention further such yet deeper causes 
as the declining birth rate, the growth of cities, the increase 
of slavery, the concentration of wealth, the increase of 
the proletariat, and the killing off through war of the best 
strains in the population. Whatever the causes, the free 



THE HELLENISTIC AND ROMAN PERIODS 167 

Greek city-state is disappearing and Greek imperialism 
is taking its place. The Greek world soon embraces the 
old empire of Persia and Egypt, and becomes ruled by 
military despots and their successors, who vary from a 
hero "to a vulgar sot or a corrupt adventurer." Greek 
culture spreads over the many principalities but Oriental 
culture also makes inroads into Greece; and thus a cosmo- 
politanism partly Greek and partly Oriental is to be found 
in the great cities. Following Greek imperialism comes 
that of Rome. Now Greek and Oriental cosmopolitanism 
travels farther west and Mediterranean civilization be- 
comes a vast political unit made up of many peoples and 
many cultures. Among them are Persians and Syrians, 
and Jews, Egyptians and Phoenicians, Greeks and Italians, 
and Celts. How vastly different the social and political 
life of the Roman Empire from that of Athens in the days 
of Pericles! Still, Greece had the highest culture to offer 
the Empire and the Empire took what she was capable of 
absorbing and this was no small amount. 

2. Religion. — Three aspects of the intellectual life of 
the Hellenistic-Roman period belong especially within the 
scope of this book — the religious, the philosophical and 
the scientific. Let us first consider the religious aspect. 

The religious aspect has been admirably described by 
Professor Murray in the following words: "Any one who 
turns from the great writers of classical Athens, say Soph- 
ocles or Aristotle, to those of the Christian era must be 
conscious of a great difference in tone. There is a change 
in the whole relation of the writer to the world about him. 
The new quality is not specifically Christian: it is just as 
marked in the Gnostics and Mithras-worshippers as in the 
Gospels and the Apocalypse, in Julian and Plotinus as in 
Gregory and Jerome. It is hard to describe. It is a rise 
of asceticism, of mysticism, in a sense, of pessimism; a 
loss of self-confidence, of hope in this life and of faith 



168 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

in normal human effort; a despair of patient inquiry, a 
cry for infallible revelation; an indifference to the welfare 
of the state, a conversion of the soul to God. It is an at- 
mosphere in which the aim of the good man is not so much 
to live justly, to help the society to which he belongs and 
enjoy the esteem of his fellow creatures; but rather, by 
means of a burning faith, by contempt for the world and 
its standards, by ecstasy, suffering and martyrdom, to 
be granted pardon for his unspeakable unworthiness, his 
immeasurable sins. There is an intensifying of certain 
spiritual emotions; an increase of sensitiveness, a failure 
of nerve. r 

"Now this antithesis is often exaggerated by the ad- 
mirers of one side or the other. A hundred people write 
as if Sophocles had no mysticism and practically speaking 
no conscience. Half a dozen retort as if St. Paul had no 
public spirit and no common sense. I have protested often 
against this exaggeration; but, stated reasonably, as a 
change of proportion and not a creation of new hearts, the 
antithesis is certainly based on fact." l 

The traditional religion was by the time of Plato bank- 
rupt. It failed in two tests. First, the myths, such as the 
tales found in Homer and Hesiod, could no longer be 
believed by any enlightened man and to such men as 
Plato they were even blasphemous. Moreover, not only 
were they incredible as stories but the conception of the 
gods they presupposed was too primitive and even savage 
for men who had reached a far nobler insight into the 
nature of the ultimate godhead. And the savage ritual 
had become repulsive. Second, the traditional religion 
failed to satisfy "men's ethical requirements and aspira- 
tions." Here "it was if anything weaker than elsewhere. 
Now a religious belief that is scientifically preposterous 
may still have a long and comfortable life before it. Any 
1 Four Stages of Greek Religion, p. 303 f . 



THE HELLENISTIC AND ROMAN PERIODS 169 

worshipper can suspend the scientific part of his mind 
while worshipping. But a religious belief that is morally 
contemptible is in serious danger, because when the re- 
ligious emotions surge up the moral emotions are not far 
away. And the clash cannot be hidden." 

One consequence of the loss of the traditional religion, 
especially the Olympic, was that the world seemed no 
longer governed by gods who punished injustice and wick- 
edness and who could be influenced by the motives and 
purposes of men. Rather the world seemed governed by 
Chance or Fortune. This is the goddess and "happy is 
the man who knows how to placate Fortune and make her 
smile upon him!" A sentence from Pliny makes the prin- 
ciple clear. "Throughout the whole world, at every place 
and hour, by every voice Fortune alone is invoked and her 
name spoken: she is the one defendant, the one culprit, 
the one thought in men's minds, the one object of praise, 
the one cause. She is worshipped with insults, counted as 
fickle and often as blind, wandering, inconsistent, elusive, 
changeful, and friend of the unworthy. . . . We are so 
much at the mercy of chance that Chance is our god." * 
Evidently, this is the doctrine that human effort does not 
count. It is the natural response to a world filled with 
great catastrophes and changes, a world in which military 
leaders were making superhuman conquests not in the 
name of their gods but in a spirit of hospitality to all the 
religions that crossed their paths. There is little difference 
between this belief in chance and the belief in fatalism. 
Still the doctrine that all is due to Fate or Destiny can be 
the nobler and indeed becomes most noble in the teachings 
of the Stoic philosophers that the divine Destiny or Provi- 
dence rules in all things. 

Two other important aspects of the new religion were 
the deification of the heavens and the deification of man.- 
1 Quoted by Murray, p. 114. 






170 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

Even by the older philosophers and especially by Plato 
the sun, moon and stars were already spoken of as divine. 
Now when the Oriental influence has become direct and 
welcome, the cults of the heavenly bodies and the wander- 
ing stars become popular indeed; and many ways to strange 
magic are open. Of these ways the one open to astrology 
must be especially mentioned. One ancient author tells 
us: " Other nations despise the philosophy of Greece. It 
is so recent and so constantly changing. They have tradi- 
tions which come from vast antiquity and never change. 
Notably the Chaldeans have collected observations of 
the stars through long ages, and teach how every event in 
the heavens has its meaning, as part of the eternal scheme 
of divine forethought. . . . By the risings and settings 
of the stars and by the colors they assume, the Chaldeans 
predict great winds and storms and waves of excessive 
heat, comets and earthquakes, and in general all changes 
fraught with weal or woe not only to nations and regions of 
the world, but to kings and to ordinary men and women." * 
In this religion of the stars the world below the moon 
and the planets is markedly distinguished from the world 
of the fixed stars. Here below is the world ruled by Fate 
and Chance and evil demons but beyond these changeable 
stars is the home of the ultimate God, the land of freedom 
and bliss. There above is our true home, for our souls are 
sparks of divine life, effluences of the stars. Thither we 
shall return after death; "but in the meantime? In the 
meantime there are initiations, sacraments, mystic ways 
of communion with God. To see God face to face is, to the 
ordinary unprepared man, sheer death. But to see Him 
after due purification, to be led to Him along the true 
Way by an initiating Priest, is the ultimate blessing of 
human life. It is to die and be born again." 2 

1 Quoted by Murray, p. 124. 

2 Murray, p. 128. 



THE HELLENISTIC AND ROMAN PERIODS 171 

This brings us at once to another characteristic and re- 
lated doctrine, that of a mediator between God and man. 
There is the priest but behind the priest there is some 
greater teacher in the land from which he has come and 
behind the latter there is some still greater master ever 
more remote, from whom the magic rites and the revela- 
tion originally came. But beyond all is "the one eternal 
Divine mediator, who being in perfection both man and 
God can alone fully reveal God to man, and lead man's 
soul up the heavenly path to its ultimate peace. This 
mediator descends from God through the heavenly spheres. 
There is associated with him the ancient belief in the dying 
and suffering god. When his work is done he ascends to 
Heaven to sit by the side of the Father in glory." However, 
besides the mediator there is a direct way by which the 
heavenly vision is given to men, to men of especial piety 
and prophetic power. This way is the trance and ecstasy 
of the saint, involving sometimes the temporary departure 
of the soul from the body and its union with God. 

Besides the deification of the world of the heavens is the 
deification of man. From time immemorial all of these 
peoples in the eastern Mediterranean world had been 
accustomed to the conception of the God-man. In the 
olden time the heroes and the kings had been divine; still 
if they were divine, were they any greater than these 
conquerors and emperors whose mere word seemed suffi- 
cient to bring the superhuman to pass? Are these men 
not members of that hierarchy of lesser gods by which the 
will of the ultimate God and His providential care for man 
are made manifest in the happenings of this lower world? 

But to the nobler religious men of these days not the 
worldly powerful deserves most to be deified for all men 
are sons of God and have come from God, and the divine 
manifests itself in man not by the deeds of the mighty but 
by the helping of our fellow man and by the life of the 



172 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

spirit. To which statement may be added, as an instance 
of the intense moral enthusiasm of these days, the noble 
ending of a document that may be called a swan song 
of ancient paganism. "Souls that have lived in virtue are 
in general happy, and when separated from the irrational 
part of their nature, and made clean from all matter, have 
communion with the gods and join them in the governing 
of the whole world. Yet even if none of this happiness 
fell to their lot, virtue itself, and the joy and glory of virtue, 
and the life that is subject to no grief and no master are 
enough to make happy those who have set themselves to 
live according to virtue and have achieved it." 1 

Finally, there is to be mentioned as a characteristic 
trait of the religion of this period, a tendency related to 
astrology and in part a consequence of the disbelief in the 
older yet sacred myths. I refer to the practice of allegori- 
cal interpretation, which completely reconciles the sacred 
character of the myths, ritual and magic with their seem- 
ing absurdity and savagery. The ancient myths and 
customs are not to be taken literally but to be interpreted 
spiritually. God talks to man in allegories and the spirit- 
ually minded alone can hear the true message. But what 
are the limits of such divine allegories? Evidently there 
is none, for this interest in and approval of allegorical 
interpretation opens a way that leads directly to the most 
fanciful and absurd hypotheses that mysticism may sug- 
gest. The ancient savage myths are filled with noble 
truth, the sacred writings of old are full of hidden meaning 
and require a mass of commentary to bring this meaning 
to the reader. Even the world about us and our life within 
it are but allegories. All is allegory; and if we might only 
see with the eyes of faith and behold the world from the 
heavenly point of view all would be clear. The true world 

1 Sallustius, On the Gods and the World (translated and pub- 
lished by Murray in his Four Stages of Greek Religion, p. 214). 



THE HELLENISTIC AND ROMAN PERIODS 173 

is above the moon, this world is but a delusion to the sinner 
and an allegory to the saint. Such was a belief of thought- 
ful men in Hellenistic and Roman days and such, we shall 
see, remained the belief of Europe throughout the middle 
ages. 

Of course all of these many doctrines, as held and put 
into practice by the people of the Greco-Roman world, 
varied from primitive superstition and savage magic on 
the one hand to the noblest and most spiritual mysticism 
on the other hand. The complete story is almost infinitely 
complex and I have given only its barest outlines. Such 
in essence was the religion of these many centuries, be- 
coming more markedly primitive as science and philosophy 
became more and more decadent. Such was the religious 
atmosphere into which Christianity entered. Such indeed 
remained in principle the religious atmosphere of Mediter- 
ranean and western Europe even to modern days. 

For further study read: 

Murray, G., Four Stages of Greek Religion, 1912, 103-214. 
For more extensive study read: 

Wendland, P., Hellenistisch-romische Kultur, 1907; 

Cumont, F. V. M., Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism, 
1911. 
(For a short and select bibliography cf. Murray, Four Stages of 

Greek Religion, p. 153 f.) 

3. Philosophy. — From the beginning Greek philosophy 
had never been thoroughly secular, rather it had been 
" a way of life/' a religion. This religious character of 
philosophy had been especially prominent in the western 
tradition in its two chief branches, the Pythagorean and 
the Eleatic; but in the Athenian period, in Sicily, in Athens 
and in Abdera, among both Pythagorean and eastern 
atomists, astronomers and mathematicians there had been 
signs of research becoming purely scientific. And this 



174 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

tendency toward pure secularism was not, as we shall see, 
without its effect in the following period. Still, the most 
powerful influences at work in the philosophy of the Athe- 
nian period and even in Athens itself were semi-religious 
and ethical. Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, in addition 
to their distinctly secular or scientific interests, had a 
marked Pythagorean interest in the welfare and destiny 
of the soul. They showed also a marked religious interest, 
over and above their distinctly scientific interest, in the 
world of the stars ; for the world of the fixed stars seemed 
nearer God even to Plato who, as we have seen, all but en- 
tertained the hypothesis that contradicts the very central 
thought of the Orphic-Pythagorean religion, the astronomy 
that we moderns know as Copernican. 

In the Hellenistic and Roman periods the tendencies to 
secularize science gradually become weaker and finally 
die; whereas the religious and ethical tendencies encroach 
more and more upon the scientific until philosophy be- 
comes a purely religious philosophy, or theology. These 
tendencies are already prominent before the end of the 
fourth century. The philosophers, or intellectual leaders 
are ceasing to be men of research, investigators, or un- 
prejudiced enquirers after truth, and are becoming proph- 
ets, preachers and "guides to the better life." fThey 
come not to argue but to convinse, not to enquire but to 
persuade, not as seekers after truth but as those speaking 
with authority"^ The voice is no longer the voice of the 
Greek philosopher of the sixth and fifth centuries but the 
voice of the Semitic prophet whose message begins "Thus 
saith the Lord." And remarkable to add, many of the 
most prominent of these philosophers of life were not 
Greeks, though they taught in Athens, but Semites. Greek 
philosophy is passing, precisely because Greece herself is 
passing; for another world, a bigger world is coming into 
being, a world of which Greece is only a part. So too, the 



THE HELLENISTIC AND ROMAN PERIODS 175 

unique prominence of Athens is passing, for other rich and 
cultured cities are now becoming metropolitan seats of 
learning. Among these Alexandria is the most famous. 
Here meet men of all the Mediterranean countries and of 
the countries farther East. Here Persian, Semite, Egyp- 
tian, Greek and later Roman are all at home. Their 
language may be Greek but their thought, their beliefs and 
their customs are of many lands. 

However, the prophet-philosopher is not merely a 
prophet. He is also a philosopher. It is true, he has a mes- 
sage to give mankind and he delivers this message not as 
the outcome of research or as something requiring to be 
verified; still if you hear his voice and obey his call, he 
will offer you proof afterward. Then too, there are rival 
voices; and he must combat these voices and in turn make 
his own message impregnable against their attacks. Now, 
proof and argumentative attack and defence require a 
philosophy, an array of fundamental premises. And to 
secure this philosophical foundation the prophet-philoso- 
pher goes back to the philosophical teachings of the sixth 
and fifth centuries; but what he selects depends upon his 
controversial, pedagogical and apologetic needs rather 
than upon an open-minded scrutiny. In short, philosophy 
remains a chief subject of study and of writing during these 
periods and indeed for seventeen hundred years; but it 
becomes a philosophy that is traditional and apologetic, 
and it remains such until a new civilization is born and the 
genuine spirit of curiosity and research again inspires the 
intellect of man. In saying this we must not undervalue 
these periods and the many centuries that follow; for these 
seventeen centuries are important philosophically. True, 
the philosophical changes are few and take place slowly. 
None the less these centuries mark the passing of the old 
civilization and the birth of the new; they form the bridge 
between the two great ages; and they have left in our 



176 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

modern intellects vestiges of themselves which promise 
to remain there as long as European culture itself en- 
dures. 

The philosophical tendencies of the Hellenistic and Ro- 
man periods have two other characteristics in common. 
The first of these two characteristics is the appeal "to 
universal belief," or the consensus gentium. This tendency 
was not new; but it now becomes dominant and explicit. 
Even throughout the preceding periods the philosopher 
rested his ease upon its logical consistency and the intel- 
lectual satisfaction it afforded rather than upon objective 
and experimental verification. That is to say, there was a 
marked subjective strain running through all Greek 
thought. This trait now comes prominently to view in the 
dominating conviction that the belief of all mankind and 
the belief of great antiquity are an ultimate authority or 
proof. What has been believed semper, ubique, et ab 
omnibus is as such true. Of course this appeal to universal 
belief, to the consensus gentium, was really but an appeal to 
the beliefs of the age, to the beliefs that were spreading 
throughout the Mediterranean world or to the beliefs of 
extreme antiquity, which had in previous centuries spread 
throughout that world. In any case, it was not what the 
philosopher of that time thought it, as we can see who 
judge of it from a distance and as he could not for he lived 
amid men who knew no other culture. He thought it 
man's innate and infallible reason speaking, he thought it 
God in man and through man pronouncing the eternal 
verities. We know it to be the peculiar product of the 
remarkable religious, social, political and economic en- 
vironment of the Mediterranean world and the neighbor- 
ing Orient. 

The second remaining characteristic common to the 
philosophical tendencies of the Hellenistic and Roman 
periods is still to be mentioned. The major problem of 



THE HELLENISTIC AND ROMAN PERIODS 177 

the wise man is to free himself from destiny, from the for- 
tunes and misfortunes of this world beneath the moon. 
Of course, this trait was simply part of the general reli- 
gious tendency of the age which we have already studied. 
The wise man, or later the holy man, differs markedly 
from the fool and the sinner; for he is independent of 
fortune. He has renounced the wicked world and its 
pomps and vanities. His mind and heart are set on the 
goods that no man can take from him or on the world that 
passeth not away. Thus, the philosopher and the 
ascetic hermit become species of the same genus. There is 
the common aim, to be free from the world that the ordi- 
nary man values so highly, the world that cannot satisfy, 
the world that is but vanity, and finally to be free from all 
the sinful lusts of the flesh. Briefly put, no matter how 
philosopher may differ from philosopher and quarrel with 
philosopher, one and all appeal to the universal beliefs of 
mankind and one and all seek to free mankind from chance 
or fortune and from the world and the flesh. 

4. Scientific progress. — The general drift of the in- 
tellectual life of the Hellenistic and Roman periods was 
more and more nearly limited to the religious current. 
None the less, it would be an error to assume that the spe- 
cial sciences died with Aristotle or even ceased to progress 
immediately after his time. On the contrary, all the 
sciences of the fourth century continued to progress during 
the third and reached their highest mark in this century. 
But by the year 200 B. C. the progressive spirit indispen- 
sable for scientific research was steadily declining; and as 
the centuries passed science became more and more a 
tradition, more and more a mere study of the scientists 
of former days. Yet even such study to be critical or 
thorough requires scientific acumen and learning and these 
too were passing away; for by the end of the Roman period 
the scholar could at the best compile inferior elementary 



178 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

text-books out of the older material with little, if any, 
critical insight or scientific self-confidence. 

For further study read: 

Botsford and Sihler, Hellenic Civilization, 627-656. 
For more extensive study read: 

Heiberg, J. L., Naturwissenschaf t und Mathematik im klas- 

sischen Altertum, 1912; 
Dannemann, F., Die Naturwissenschaf ten in ihrer Ent- 

wicklung, 1910; 
Gerland und Traumuller, Geschichte der physikalischen 
Experimentierkunst, 1899. 

(a) In geography. — For one science especially the 
Hellenistic and Roman periods were highly favorable, 
that is, for the growth of geographical knowledge. The 
conquests of Alexander carried his soldiers into India and 
central Asia and made possible a more extensive and more 
nearly accurate knowledge of the eastern world as far as 
western India and central Asia; and some information 
even regarding China was available for the later geogra- 
phers. At the same time that this wider knowledge of the 
Eastern world was acquiring, a remarkable expedition 
under the leadership of Pytheas of Massilia explored the 
western coast of Europe, the coast of the British Isles and 
the coast south of the German Sea. With the expansion 
of the Roman Empire the amount of such information 
regarding both the East and the West increased, so that 
by 150 A. D., the known world included also Central Eu- 
rope, the British Isles, Southern Russia, a considerable 
stretch on the eastern and western coasts of Africa and the 
sources of the Nile. However, the most significant prog- 
ress was the endeavor to ascertain the size of the earth, 
whose spherical shape was now fully accepted by geogra- 
phers, and to ascertain the latitude and longitude of the 
different important centers, so that world-maps of some 



THE HELLENISTIC AND ROMAN PERIODS 179 

accuracy might be constructed. The height of this geo- 
graphical progress was reached in the famous map con- 
structed by Ptolemy about 150 A. D. In addition to this 
interest in mathematical geography there was marked 
interest in physical geography, shown especially in the 
study of the tides on the Atlantic coast and in the study of 
volcanoes and other mountains and of the changes taking 
place on the earth's surface. Finally, a far more extensive 
knowledge of the peoples of the known world and of their 
customs was acquiring through the reports of soldiers and 
travellers. Thus geographical information reached its 
maximum by the end of the second century after Christ; 
and from that time men depended more and more upon 
what earlier students of geography had written, and their 
interest and knowledge kept decreasing. 1 

For further study read: 

Tozer, History of Ancient Geography, 98-370; 
Botsford and Sihler, Hellenic Civilization, 635-639. 

(b) In astronomy. — The mathematical research in 
astronomy from Plato to Ptolemy was of the highest 
importance, especially the work done in the third century 

1 The men that deserve especially to be remembered because 
of their contribution to geographical knowledge or because of their 
compilation of earlier writings on geography are: Pytheas of Mas- 
silia, fl. c. 330 B. C; Dicaearchus of Sicily, fl. c. 320 B. C; Eratos- 
thenes of Cyrene, fl. c. 240 B. C. (for his measurement of the earth); 
Hipparchus of the island of Rhodes, fl. c. 140 B. C. (for his investi- 
gations of the parallels of latitude and meridians of longitude); 
Posidonius of Syria, fl. c. 100 B. C. (for his travels and descriptive 
geography); Polybius of Megalopolis in Arcadia, fl. c. 170 B. C. 
(for his descriptive and historical geography); Strabo, fl. c. 20 B. C. 
(the great geographer of the Augustan age who sums up the existing 
geographical knowledge) ; Pliny, fl. c. 60 A. D. (for his compilation of 
the knowledge contained in the writings of earlier authors); and 
finally Ptolemy (and his immediate predecessor Marinus Tyrius to 
whom he is greatly indebted) of Alexandria, fl. c. 150 A. D. 



180 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

B. C. One of the tragedies of history is that the helio- 
centric hypothesis was explicitly entertained by one small 
group of astronomers in this century * only to be rejected 
by the majority who followed Aristotle. However, the 
work of both groups raised mathematical astronomy from 
a speculative to a definitely scientific stage. Summed up 
in briefest outline, this progress in mathematical astron- 
omy included the calculation of the size of the earth, the 
distances of the sun and moon, the location of eclipses in 
the heavens and the more nearly accurate calculation of 
their times of occurrence. It included the further dis- 
covery of irregularities in the paths of the sun, moon and 
planets and the attempt to account for them by circles, 
circles whose centers lay on the circumference of other 
circles (epicycles) and by eccentricities. Finally, it in- 
cluded the discovery of the refraction of light by the 
earth's atmosphere and, in general, an enlargement and 
an increase in the accuracy of such information as that 
which belongs in an astronomical almanac. 2 

For further study read: 

Berry, Short History of Astronomy, 34-75; 
Botsford and Sihler, Hellenic Civilization, 639-641. 

1 The most important name in this smaller group is Aristarchus 
of Samos, fl. c. 270 B. C. 

2 Besides Aristarchus the astronomers that deserve especially to 
be remembered for their contributions to astronomy in these periods 
are: Eratosthenes (already mentioned for his estimate of the size 
of the earth) ; Hipparchus of Rhodes, fl. c. 140 B. C. (the greatest 
mathematical astronomer of the ancient world); and, after almost 
three hundred years of little if any progress, Ptolemy of Alexandria, 
fl. c. 150 A. D. "His reputation rests chiefly on his great astronomical 
treatise, known as the Almagest, which is the source from which by 
far the greater part of our knowledge of Greek astronomy is derived, 
and which may be fairly regarded as the astronomical Bible of the 
middle ages." The history of Greek astronomy practically ceasea 
with Ptolemy. 



THE HELLENISTIC AND ROMAN PERIODS 181 

For more extensive study read: 

Heath, T. L., Aristarchus of Samos, 1-350. 

(c) In mathematics. — Mathematics also made great 
progress during the Hellenistic period, especially during 
the third century B. C; for this was the century of the 
three most famous mathematicians of the ancient world, 
Euclid, Archimedes and Apollonius. This progress was 
centered in the work of the school of Alexandria at which 
most mathematicians either studied or taught. The school 
of Alexandria was a lineal descendant of the Academy at 
Athens as it in turn was a descendant of the school of 
Pythagoras. To sum up the numerous details of mathe- 
matical history during these centuries in a few sentences 
is difficult; but the important facts for the student of phi- 
losophy to note are these. The third century before Christ 
saw elementary geometry, conies and arithmetic reach the 
stage where further progress was virtually impossible 
until new methods were discovered ; but these new methods 
were not to. be discovered until eighteen hundred years 
later in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Besides 
geometry, conies and arithmetic the beginnings of mechan- 
ics were made by Archimedes. Moreover, it is important 
to note that Archimedes' method of study laid those 
foundations of geometry which rest on measurements and 
on exhaustions and was therefore the beginning of those 
discoveries which, again in the seventeenth century, led 
to the discovery of the calculus. To the mathematics of 
the third century later mathematicians added the be- 
ginnings of trigonometry and algebra. The names es- 
pecially associated with the former are Hipparchus and 
Ptolemy and with the latter Diaphantus of Perga, that is 
to say, with men who excepting Hipparchus lived in the 
second and third centuries after Christ. Finally, it is 
to be noted that Rome did not contribute to either astron- 



182 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

omy or to mathematics. Her part in the history of these 
sciences was to transmit a few quite elementary text-books 
to the schools of the middle ages. 1 

For further study read: 

Ball, Short Account of the History of Mathematics, 31-109; 

Cajori, History of Mathematics, 29-83; 

Gow, History of Greek Mathematics, 192-315. 
For more extensive study read: 

Cantor, Vorlesungen iiber die Geschichte der Mathematik. 

(d) In medicine. — Finally, we must consider briefly 
the medical progress in these periods; for, as we have seen, 
one of the important factors in enabling man to outgrow 
primitive thought and custom and to become rational in 
his response to the world about him is the growth of knowl- 
edge regarding the structure and working of his body and 
regarding the causes and the cure of disease. The early 
Hellenistic period was also the time when medical science 
reached its highest point of development in the ancient 
world and the school in which this happened was also the 
school of Alexandria. There human anatomical research 
was permitted and encouraged, possibly because of the 
Egyptian custom of embalming the dead and partly be- 
cause of vivisection permitted upon criminals condemned 
to death. But in the early stages of medicine anatomy 
without physiology is not especially helpful except to sur- 
gery; and this explains why surgery flourished especially 

1 The names of mathematicians belonging to this great period in 
the history of mathematics that deserve especially to be made 
familiar are the following: Euclid, fl. c. 290 B. C. ; Archimedes of Syra- 
cuse, fl. c. 250 B. C; Apollonius of Perga, fl. c. 220 B. C.; Hipparchus 
of Rhodes, the great astronomer, fl. c. 120 B. C.J Ptolemy of Alex- 
andria, the great geographer and astronomer, fl. c. 150 A. D.; Pappus 
of Alexandria, a geometrician of eminence, fl. c. 300 A. D.; and Dio- 
phantus of Alexandria, probably fl. c. 250 A. D. 



THE HELLENISTIC AND ROMAN PERIODS 183 

in these days. Medicine had to progress by an empirical 
study of the history and symptoms and by the experi- 
mental treatment of disease; and there did arise in Alex- 
andria an " Empiric " school of physicians which followed 
the best part of the Hippocratic tradition and which raised 
Greek medicine to its highest stage. In short, these cen- 
turies of the early Alexandrian school saw Greek medical 
science reach in surgery, obstetrics and the nursing of the 
sick a stage comparable with modern medicine in those 
respects where modern medicine does not depend upon the 
enormous growth of physiological science and of the 
knowledge of the causes of disease. 

None the less, the period of progress was short here as 
elsewhere. Soon came the days when medical science 
became either a mere tradition or a mere speculation. 
Rome was no more constituted to progress beyond Greece 
in medicine than she was in mathematics and astronomy. 
Hence her part was to learn what Greek teachers had to 
give and to hand on in her text-books what she had ac- 
quired. 1 

For further study read: 

Botsford and Sihler, Hellenic Civilization, 631-635. 

1 The most noted names in the history of medicine belonging 
to these periods are the following: Herophilus of Alexandria, fl. c. 
300 B. C; his contemporary Erasistratus of Alexandria, and the 
founder of the empiric school (possibly Philinus of Cos, a pupil of 
Herophilus). Noted names in Roman medicine are Celsus, probably 
fl. c. 1 A. D. and Galen, fl. c. 170 A. D. The former was a mere 
compiler of information and is important chiefly because of the 
wide study of his works in the early days of modern medicine. The 
latter also was a compiler and systematizer, but he was in addition 
an ardent though hardly successful man of research. His importance 
is again due to his writings which in later days became the highly 
valued text-books of the Arabian physicians and through them of 
European physicians till the days when the ancient medicine was 
supplanted by the results of modern research. 



184 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 



For more extensive study read: 

Puschmann, T., History of Medical Instruction, 1891; 
Sprengel-Rosenbaum, Geschichte der Medizin; 
Neuberger, M., Geschichte der Medizin, 1906-08; 
Schwalbe, E., Vorlesungen iiber die Geschichte der Medizin, 
1909. 






CHAPTER XVI 

THE PHILOSOPHICAL SCHOOLS 

1. Introductory. — Within the thousand years from 
300 B. C. to 700 A. D. arose many philosophical parties 
or schools differing one from another in numerous ways in 
spite of the common tendencies that made them all legit- 
imate offspring of the age. In the earlier centuries these 
differences between the rival philosophical tendencies are 
marked, but they become less evident as the general 
decadence proceeds and by the middle of the period have 
in large measure disappeared. Moreover, in the earlier 
centuries the schools of the golden age yet lingered on, for 
the Pythagoreans, the Socratics, the Platonists, the Aris- 
totelians, the Ionians and the Eleatics were still distin- 
guishable; but already these older schools were becoming 
more and more united by a common composite philosophy 
that may be called eclectic. In addition to these philo- 
sophical parties surviving from the preceding period there 
arose in the latter half of the fourth century three new and 
distinct philosophical schools, the Epicurean, the Stoic 
and the Skeptic. But in a few centuries these new schools 
also tend to merge into the same composite philosophy of 
the age and by the end of the early Roman Empire have 
quite disappeared as distinct parties. Thus as the cen- 
turies go by the philosophical thought of the Mediterranean 
world becomes more and more uniform, it becomes es- 
sentially religious, and it is best exemplified in the two 
great religious philosophies, the Neoplatonic and the Chris- 
tian. In this chapter we shall study the two most promi- 

185 



186 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

nent schools arising in the Hellenistic period, the Epi- 
curean and the Stoic, and the school that is peculiarly their 
successor in the Roman period, the Neoplatonic, leaving 
for the two following chapters respectively the study of 
Rome's great contribution to European thought, the 
Roman law, and the study of the Christian philosophy. 

2. The philpsophical schools of the Hellenistic and 
Roman periods. — The schools of the Hellenistic period 
were founded by their masters explicitly to meet a moral 
and religious need and therefore they may be called phil- 
osophical churches, not churches, however, for the masses, 
since the masses do not get their religion and philosophy 
from the great thinkers but from the general social environ- 
ment and from the popular preachers. Rather these schools 
represented the intellectual aristocracy and were fitted for 
the moral and religious needs only of extraordinary 
men. 

The Epicurean school aimed to free man from supersti- 
tion and to teach man how to live in a world in which he 
has nothing to fear either before or after death. Since, 
according to Epicurus, man lives in a world of atoms 
governed only by mechanical laws and since such a world 
is neither moral nor immoral, neither divine nor diabolical; 
man has nothing to fear but man and nothing for which 
to hope except what man through his own free will and 
efforts is able to accomplish. If man will be thoroughly 
hard-headed and will seek the pleasures that endure, that 
are really worth while, and that are obtainable in every 
station of life; then man may live happily and die fear- 
lessly. In contrast, the Stoic school aimed to make man 
believe in a divinely governed world, a world on which he 
might rest his hopes and to which he might completely 
entrust his life and its well-being. Nature is divine and 
the heavenly Father in whom we live and move and have 
our being rules all by His providence. All that happens 



THE PHILOSOPHICAL SCHOOLS 187 

is of God, all came from God and will return to God. 
Therefore whether we live or die, whether we thrive or 
suffer, whether our lot is what the world calls easy or hard, 
we are God's and His will is working in us and is determin- 
ing all for our good. Our part is but to believe in God and 
to live according to this belief. Our part is but to learn to 
desire that God's will be fulfilled in us, and to desire only 
what God desires. The Skeptic solved life's problem still 
differently. The wisest thing for man to learn is that he 
can know nothing, that science is impossible and that the 
world is therefore an insolvable problem. If man learns 
this he will base no hopes on the world and he will base no 
fears on the world. Rather he will harden himself to 
extreme indifference. Hope not, fear not, says the Skeptic, 
but so direct your life that you cannot lose and cannot 
have your peace of mind disturbed, your hopes unrealized 
or your happiness destroyed. In short, be indifferent. 

Evidently such philosophies of life are only for the in- 
tellectually gifted and the self -directed. They betoken 
the existence still of intellectualism and individualism, and 
the existence still of the fight against the superstitions of 
the masses. But they bear also the marks of decadence 
and the loss of nerve; for they are evidently counsels of 
defence against the world. Their optimism is intended to 
inhibit or suppress a deeper pessimism. In their struggle 
against the popular religion and its prehistoric tendencies 
the Epicurean was most uncompromising and the Stoic 
least; but neither could win mankind, for neither really 
had anything to offer mankind that could bring back the 
old enthusiasm. That is to say, they fought superstition 
but this left their philosophy merely negative; and they 
defended man against a world of which he really despaired 
but this too left their philosophy merely negative. Now a 
negative belief cannot win the world ; for to win the world 
one must needs teach what to love, what to hope, what to 



188 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

do. Even savage hopes and loves and deeds are more 
stimulating and effective than the negative commands of 
the enlightened. Indeed, this truth is exemplified by these 
philosophical schools themselves; for they slowly died 
away or were gradually transformed into distinctly re- 
ligious philosophies, approaching closer and closer the 
popular religion. 

By the Christian era philosophy had become distinctly 
religious and the story of its further development is closely 
related to the history of the religions within the Roman 
Empire. This story is highly complicated, for each re- 
ligious sect and movement had its theologians, teachers, 
or wise men; and as it is not within the scope of this book 
to give more than a general view of this remarkable period 
in Europe's intellectual history, let us single out the two 
most important and enduring philosophical movements, 
the philosophy called Neoplatonism and the Christian 
Philosophy. The two were closely related and the latter 
was much indebted to the former. 

Neoplatonism arose at Alexandria in the third century- 
after Christ out of earlier philosophical tendencies which 
date back three hundred years at least. This philosophical 
school is of especial interest to the student of philosophy; 
for it marks the bankruptcy of Greek science, by revealing 
the Greek thinker no longer interested in empirical and 
rational science but devoted to religion exclusively. The 
Neoplatonist distinguished three grades of wisdom, that 
which is empirically known, that which is known by the 
reason, and that which is super-rational, or super-scientific. 
Long before him Socrates and Plato had distinguished 
sharply between the world of perception and the world of 
science; and they had hinted at a yet higher emotional or 
ecstatic vision of the good, the true and the beautiful, 
the ultimate source of the forms. But they did not sur- 
render as the object of their chief interest the two lower 



THE PHILOSOPHICAL SCHOOLS 189 

worlds. This the Neoplatonist does, finding in God alone 
the true interest of the human mind. In distinguishing 
sharply between matter and form the Neoplatonist goes 
back also to Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. God is the 
source of all form, that is of all order and structure in the 
world; and, if we mean by a thing any object that has 
structure or character, then all things owe their existence 
ultimately to God. Above all other things our souls owe 
their being to God coming ultimately from Him; and they 
are restless until they are reunited with God, for the world 
of sense and reason cannot satisfy them and therefore 
cannot be the true object of their interest. Finally, God 
cannot be the object of our study in the way in which we 
study the material objects about us or in the way we study 
the objects of geometry. God is beyond science and there- 
fore those who would see God or be reunited with Him 
must go beyond reason. But what is beyond reason? 
The Neoplatonists and the mystics of all ages have found 
this highest state of contemplation in the ecstatic vision, 
that is, in the trance produced by auto-suggestion. 

The last great school of Mediterranean thinkers was 
composed of the fathers of the church from St. Paul to 
St. Augustine who gave the orthodox or catholic Chris- 
tianity her theology. Whence was Christianity to derive 
her philosophy? The answer is twofold. On the one hand, 
the Jews had no philosophy of their own upon which Chris- 
tianity could depend; but on the other hand, the Greeks 
had, and they alone had. In fact, the Jews before Christ 
had begun to absorb Greek thought, especially the Jews in 
Alexandria, that center of philosophy and meeting place of 
religions; and, as we have seen, by the time of Christ Greek 
philosophy had become the common possession of the 
Mediterranean world, had become genuinely the Mediter- 
ranean philosophy. Thus this Mediterranean philosophy 
had to form the intellectual environment of the Christian 



190 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

from the days of Paul of Tarsus 1 to the days of Augustine, 
the converted student of Neoplatonism, and until there 
ceased to be any philosophical environment outside the 
Christian Church. In this Mediterranean environment 
the Christianity of the apostolic age changed both reli- 
giously and philosophically until by the fifth and sixth 
centuries it had become as truly the product of Mediter- 
ranean culture as it had begun the religion of Jesus' 
disciples gathered in Jerusalem. In short, the historian 
bids us think of historic Christianity as generically Medi- 
terranean and only in some respects as specifically Judean. 
Indeed, it is only because the Church included the folk 
religion of the Mediterranean peoples that she survived 
the Dark Ages and has ever since controlled the religion 
of the southern and central European peasant. Hence 
if we mean by Christianity what the historian does, the 
actual religion of Europe from these days we are studying 
to our own, Christianity is far older in many of its ele- 
ments than even historic Judaism. In part, it is as old 
even as the Mediterranean culture itself. Its philosophy 
in the broadest sense is therefore Mediterranean. How- 
ever, we are now considering especially the philosophy of 
the great Christian thinkers. The source of this philoso- 
phy is twofold : first, the general thought of the intellectual 
Mediterranean world and Neoplatonism; and second, 
the Roman law. That is to say, the Christian thinker in 
philosophizing Christianity drew upon the legal concepts 
of the Greco-Roman and upon the concepts of the current 
philosophies. He drew in particular upon the Mediter- 
ranean conception of God, of the divine Mediator, of the 
world, of man's place in the world and of his relation to 
God and of God's relation to the world, of man's destiny 

1 Tarsus was a city of distinctly Hellenistic culture and a strong- 
hold of Stoic philosophy with which St. Paul was undoubtedly 
familiar. 



THE PHILOSOPHICAL SCHOOLS 191 

and of the ideal life, and finally of the way in which the 
soul came to be separated from God and of the means by 
which the soul can make its return to God. Christian 
theology was, of course, as were all the philosophies of 
the Roman period, a religious philosophy; and like the 
other philosophies of that period it added nothing to the 
sum of Greek science and contributed no radically new 
concepts, or principles to Greek philosophy. 1 

For further study read: 

Paulsen, F. (Thilly transl.), System of Ethics, 1899, 33-64. 

1 The names of prominent thinkers of these several centuries 
from the time of Aristotle to the days of Neoplatonism are too 
numerous to be given in our outline. They can be found in the 
more detailed histories of philosophy. The Academy and the Ly- 
ceum long continued to number able men among their members. 
Among the Epicureans the most prominent names are: Epicurus, 
fl. c. 300 B. C.j and that of the Roman poet, Lucretius, fl. c. 60 B. C. 
Of the Stoics, the most prominent names are: Zeno, fl. c. 300 B. C.j 
Chrysippus, fl. c. 290 B. C; the Roman, Panaetius, fl. c. 140 B. C; 
and in the days of the Empire, Seneca, fl. c. 40 A. D.; Epictetus, a 
contemporary of Seneca; and the emperor, Marcus Aurelius, fl. c. 
160. Of the skeptics, the most prominent names are: Pyrrho, fl. c. 
325 B. C; Arcesilaus, of the Academy, fl. c. 275; Carneades, also of 
the Academy, fl. c. 175 B. C; iEnesidemus, fl. c. 1 A. D.; and Sextus 
Empiricus, fl. c. 190 A. D. Of the so-called Eclectics, the following 
names are especially prominent : Posidonius,/. c. 100 B. C; the great 
Roman writer and statesman Cicero, fl. c. 60 B. C. ; and Plutarch, fl. c. 
100 A. D. There should be mentioned also the Jewish philosopher 
of Alexandria, a religious Platonist, Philo, fl. c. 10 A. D. Of the 
Neoplatonists the most prominent names are: Plotinus, fl. c. 250 A. 
D.; and Porphyry, ,#. c. 275. 

The transfer of Greek culture to Rome began with the conquest 
and annexation of the Greek cities of southern Italy and Sicily in 
the third century B. C. Cato the Censor, fl. c. 190 B. C, protests 
in vain against the introduction and influence of Greek culture and 
thought. By the time of Lucretius and Cicero, the Roman thinker 
has become as truly a Greek thinker as was any of his contempora- 
ries. Among all Roman writers Cicero stands first for translating 
Greek thought into Latin. 



192 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

3. The Epicurean school. — In the remainder of this 
chapter we shall study briefly the Epicurean, the Stoic 
and the Neoplatonic philosophies, leaving the study of 
Christian philosophy for a later chapter. Let us begin 
with the school founded by Epicurus * in Athens about 
300 B. C. 

Of all the Hellenistic schools the Epicurean had the 
least interest in science though it waged the keenest war 
against superstition. In fact, it was not a scientific so- 
ciety but a church. All Greek philosophical schools had 
been religious societies but they had been also schools of 
research; whereas this new school frankly renounced the 
scientific interest, for, according to the Epicurean, the 
only value of science is the practical value of freeing man 
from superstition and showing man what to live for. 
We may think of Epicurus as saying: "So far of course 
be scientific but no farther. Away with mathematics, 
astronomy and the rest as mere foolishness!" How 
different was the interest of the school as an ethical and 
religious society! As such it resembled in several respects 
the early Christian communities and was often associated 
with Christianity by its enemies. Like Christianity it 
bitterly opposed the folk religion and was accordingly 
numbered with the atheists and even persecuted. Like 
Christianity the Epicurean society was a sort of fraternity. 
Its poor and sick were cared for, it had its love feast, and 
its members were closely bound to one another by broth- 
erly affection. 

As a church the Epicurean society offered the world a 

1 Epicurus was born in Samos of Athenian ancestry in 341 B. C. 
He removed to Athens in 306 and died in 270 B. C. He was the 
founder of this school but it is doubtful if his teachings were original. 
He seems to have been indebted especially to his teacher Nausiphanes. 
None the less, he abuses Nausiphanes and all other older and con- 
temporary philosophers. 



THE PHILOSOPHICAL SCHOOLS 193 

way of life and made use of traditional philosophy only 
to defend and to establish "the faith.' ' We have then two 
questions to put and to answer: What was the Epicurean 
faith? and, How did the Epicurean defend this faith 
philosophically? Let us first study the faith. Pleasure 
is the end of life. "Every pleasure is therefore a good on 
account of its own nature, but it does not follow that 
every pleasure is worthy of being chosen; just as every 
pain is an evil, and yet every pain must not be avoided. 
But it is right to estimate all these things by the measure- 
ment and view of what is suitable and unsuitable; for at 
times we may feel the good as an evil, and at times, on the 
contrary, we may feel the evil as good. And, we think 
contentment a great good, not in order that we may never 
have but a little, but in order that, if we have not much, 
we may make use of a little, being genuinely persuaded 
that those men enjoy luxury most completely who are the 
best able to do without it; and that everything which is 
natural is easily provided, and what is useless is not easily 
procured. And simple flavors give as much pleasure as 
costly fare, when everything that can give pain, and every 
feeling of want, is removed ; and corn and water give the 
most extreme pleasure when any one in need eats them. 
To accustom one's self, therefore, to simple and inexpen- 
sive habits is a great ingredient in the perfecting of health, 
and makes a man free from hesitation with respect to the 
necessary uses of life. And when we, on certain occasions, 
fall in with more sumptuous fare it makes us in a better 
disposition towards it, and renders us fearless with respect 
to fortune. When, therefore, we say that pleasure is a 
chief good, we are not speaking of the pleasures of the de- 
bauched man, or those which lie in sensual enjoyment, 
as some think who are ignorant, and who do not entertain 
our opinions, or else interpret them perversely; but we 
mean the freedom of the body from pain, and of the soul 



194 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

from confusion. For it is not continued drinkings and 
revels, or the enjoyment of female society, or feasts of 
fish and other such things, as a costly table supplies, that 
make life pleasant, but sober contemplation, which ex- 
amines into the reasons for all choice and avoidance, and 
which puts to flight the vain opinions from which the 
greater part of the confusion arises which troubles the soul. 

"Now, the beginning and the greatest good of all these 
things is prudence, on which account prudence is some- 
thing more valuable than even philosophy, inasmuch as 
all the other virtues spring from it, teaching us that it is 
not possible to live pleasantly unless one also lives pru- 
dently and honorably and justly; and that one cannot 
live prudently and honestly and justly without living 
pleasantly; for the virtues are connate with living agree- 
ably, and living agreeably is inseparable from the virtues. 
Since, who can you think better than that man who has 
holy opinions respecting the gods, and who is utterly 
fearless with respect to death, and who has properly con- 
templated the end of nature, and who comprehends that 
the chief good is easily perfected and easily provided ; and 
the greatest evil lasts but a short period, and causes but 
brief pain. And who has no belief in necessity, which is 
set up by some as the mistress of all things, but he refers 
some things to fortune, some to ourselves, because neces- 
sity is an irresponsible power, and because he sees that 
fortune is unstable, while our own will is free; and this 
freedom constitutes, in our case, a responsibility which 
makes us encounter blame and praise." x 

In other words, seek the pleasures that are sure to be 
within reach and that last. Then you have nothing to 
fear in heaven or in earth. Fortune cannot take such 
pleasures from you, for they are the kind that depend only 

1 Quoted from Epicurus by Diogenes Laertius, CD. Yonge transl., 
pp. 471 f. 



THE PHILOSOPHICAL SCHOOLS 195 

upon your own efforts and self-control. We are not the 
victims of chance or fate or blind necessity. The life of 
pleasure is in the reach of all prudent and thoughtful men, 
for its only conditions are foresight and free-will. The 
former we may have if we so choose and the latter is ours 
by nature. Moreover, we have no need to fear what the 
vulgar fear, the gods and death and the heavenly bodies. 
The gods are not what the vulgar conceive them to be, 
nor are the myths true of the gods. The gods have no 
need of human worship or magic offerings, nor are they 
moved by human wants and prayers. The gods are happy 
and immortal and such beings neither have evil happen 
to them nor cause evil to others and such beings are not 
moved either by hate or by anger. Rather the gods are in 
no way concerned with man and his lot and they dwell 
far away in the vast spaces where they are not subject to 
the destructive forces working in this corruptible world. 
Again there is nothing to fear in death, for death is the 
end of consciousness. " Death is nothing to us; for that 
which is dissolved is devoid of sensation, and that which 
is devoid of sensation is nothing to us." When we are 
alive death is not, and when we are dead we are not. 

In defending this philosophy of life, the Epicurean found 
one general cosmological theory especially suited to his 
purpose, namely, that of Democritus. All is but a coming 
together and separation of atoms. The soul is such a 
collection of atoms and hence at death its atoms scatter 
and we are no more. Again, the phenomena of nature are 
nothing to be afraid of, because they are caused mechani- 
cally and not by supernatural or magical agents. But 
to this older cosmology the Epicurean had to make two 
radical amendments in the interest of his philosophy of 
life. First, in a world ruled by mechanical law there can 
be no freedom of the will, for each event is the result of 
necessity. This necessity is dogmatically denied, and our 



196 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

wills are declared to be free and even the atoms are said 
to be somewhat free to move non-mechanically. Second, 
it was desirable to contradict the rationalism of the 
atomists who taught that the world of sensation is illusion 
and only the world of science is real. Whatever may 
have suggested to Epicurus his theory of knowledge, it 
is an extremely clever reconciliation of commonsense and 
the older rationalism. Things are what they seem to be, 
but the errors of sense-perception arise because things are 
also vastly more. What you and I see, is but one out 
of countless aspects of a thing, hence we err if we mistake 
one aspect for another or if we take one aspect for the en- 
tire nature of the thing. 1 These two amendments -of the 
Democritic cosmology enabled the Epicurean to take the 
world as real much in the way commonsense judges it 
to be and to preach the commonsense doctrine that effort 
counts, that we can if we but will. 

In short, be hard-headed, set aside superstitious fears, 
get rid of the terrors of death and of a life beyond death, 
take the world as you find it, count on your own effort 
and perseverance, live the happiest life you can, value the 
pleasures that last and that can be surely obtained, value 
friendship and be loyal to your fellows. Life is well worth 
while provided we rid it of human errors and truly take 
matters into our own hands. The chief errors are two, 
groundless and superstitious fears and a false valuation 
of what constitutes happiness. 

1 Consider this modern instance. One man sees an object as red 
and another is color blind and sees it as gray. Can an object be 
both red and gray in the same part and at the same instant? Yes, 
provided red is a compound of which gray is an element. That is 
to say, we who see the red, see the total color; but the color blind who 
sees the gray sees but an element in the red, still an element that is 
truly present. Now the color blind makes an error only in mistaking 
the color he sees for the entire color. In other words, the error is not, 
this object is gray, but is, this object is only gray. 



THE PHILOSOPHICAL SCHOOLS 197 

For further study read: 

Taylor, A. E., Epicurus, 1911; 
Wallace, W., Epicureanism, 1880; 
Hicks, R. D., Stoic and Epicurean, 1910; 
Bakewell, Source Book in Ancient Philosophy, 290-316; 
Diogenes Laertius, Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philoso- 
phers (Letters of Epicurus) ;. 
Lucretius (transl. Bailey), The Nature of Things, 1910; 
Pater, W., Marius the Epicurean, 1892. 

4. The Stoic school. 1 — In spite of the many common 
features that make both Epicurean and Stoic men of their 
age there is a marked contrast between the ways of life 
they preach to mankind. As we have seen: the Epicurean 
is hard-headed, asking nothing of the gods and needing 
only his free will and the attainability of happiness by the 
prudent. In contrast, the Stoic not only teaches man's 
dependence upon God but also urges man to trust in God 
completely, this trust being man's highest and ultimately 
only virtue. The Epicurean tells of a world ruled by me- 
chanical forces and the chance configurations of atoms. 
The Stoic tells of a world guided in its transformations 
by Providence, a teleological world, and a world that is 
fundamentally and as a totality good. Here according 
to the Stoic is the secret of the higher life: — Live true to 
this faith in the divine providence, or world-reason. De- 
sire only what God desires; call nothing really evil; fear 
nothing for all is of God; will what God wills. 

Evidently if taken literally and practised faithfully this 
philosophy of life would end in moral paralysis. If all is 
good, nothing is evil; and if nothing is evil, what is there 
for the will to choose? Life becomes complete indifference 

1 The Stoic school was founded by Zeno of Citium in the island of 
Cyprus. He was according to tradition a Phoenician. He came to 
Athens in 314 B. C, studied under several philosophers and founded 
his own school in 294. 



198 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

and inaction. But the Stoic did not take his doctrine 
literally. 1 The will has something to do. Man has evil 
to fight. Good and bad are distinct and it is important 
not to confuse the two. But what is good? What God 
does as opposed to what man does. Put into other words, 
nature's ways are good, and if man will but be truly 
natural he will be good. But again a question arises: 
What is natural? The answer is not new. As Socrates 
and his successors found forms in the world of the lifeless 
and the living, so does the Stoic. Thus, the problem 
quickly reduces to ascertaining what is the "form" of 
man and this is quickly ascertained if we contrast man 
and brutes. Brutes are ruled entirely by instinct, but man 
is endowed with reason. Man is hereby made in the image 
of God, for God is reason. Therefore to live the life true 
to nature is to be rational, is to live guided not by instinct 
but solely by reason. Admirable as this sounds, it still 
leaves one puzzled what actually to do in the crises of 
life. Reason can sit as judge between rival tendencies 
but how shall it decide. Actions do not come branded as 
rational or natural, for to be rational merely means to be 
judicial and to decide without bias which side one should 
take. But to take sides one has to know the law, and to 
render rational decisions one has to be guided by princi- 
ples. Therefore, to tell men to be rational and to leave 
them ignorant of how to judge between rival deeds or to 
harmonize conflicting tendencies is to leave them morally 
helpless. In short, the Stoic is forced to get back to the 
position of commonsense and find objective good and evil. 

1 Men can do evil though God can counteract their doings and keep 
His universe as a whole good. This is a favorite religious and phil- 
osophical hypothesis of the mystics. The world as a whole is good, 
though the parts are often evil; or the evil may even be essential to 
the perfection of the whole, as the shadows are essential to the beauty 
of a painting. 



THE PHILOSOPHICAL SCHOOLS 199 

Some deeds are inherently good and some inherently bad, 
or some deeds are to be preferred to others. And when the 
Stoic comes to decide which is which, we find him to be 
of the same mind as the other noble characters of his age. 
That is, the age and not the Stoic makes the Stoic moral- 
ity. But it is important to press the question further. 
How is one to distinguish the good from the bad? The 
answer given by the Stoic is : The universal belief of man, 
the consensus gentium will tell. The Stoic puts it also, 
mankind has inborn information in the sense that there are 
born in man faculties of judging infallibly and these facul- 
ties will intuitively tell what is good and bad. That is to 
say, there is no principle by which the good is to be defined 
as distinct from the bad, for the limit of analysis is reached 
before such a principle is given. The ultimate fact is that 
man can intuitively decide whether this is good or that is 
bad; but why this is good or that is bad, he cannot tell. 
Here the Stoic seems philosophically inferior to the Epi- 
curean with his doctrine that pleasure is good and pain 
is evil. 

Let us turn from these particular problems and con- 
sider Stoicism in general as one of " the ways of life" offered 
to man in these remarkable centuries. Needless to say, 
Stoicism was, as was Epicureanism, an effort of the man of 
insight and of self-control to adjust himself to the spiritual 
and political world of those days; and it was a noble effort. 
Needless also is it to add, Stoicism was a true offspring 
of the Hellenistic age. What we should rather consider 
is the specific part this philosophy played. It held out to 
man an ideal that none could realize, but that some men 
could at least approach. As a consequence, Stoicism has 
been famous in all the centuries since for the remarkable 
characters it produced. Again, Stoicism was a religion 
only for the extremely intellectual and could never become 
the religion of the folk; and, as a consequence, it seems to 



200 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

have been almost without influence upon the popular 
religions. Finally, Stoicism was peculiarly suited to the 
rigorous morals of republican Rome and was therefore 
especially successful in competing with its rivals for the 
approval of the great Romans; and certainly two of its 
greatest triumphs were the influence it exerted upon the 
Roman law through the great Roman jurists who had ab- 
sorbed its moral principles, and the influence it exerted 
upon Roman statesmen. 

In contrast with Epicureanism Stoicism comes closer to 
being true to the age in its asceticism and in its compro- 
mise with the superstitions, ritual and magic of the people. 
In contrast with Christianity it seems cold and hard- 
hearted. The Stoic might relieve a brother's distress or 
go to the aid of the unfortunate, but he did so as a rational 
moralist and not as a fellow sympathizer. Pity and love 
of the brethren seemed to him weakness and a danger to 
his philosophical peace of mind. "The Wise Man was not 
to concern himself with his brethren, he was only to serve 
them." Thus the Stoic morality was rationalism purged 
of emotion and sentiment; and as such it was as truly 
pathological in its extreme as was the life it condemned, 
the life of luxury and debauchery at the other extreme. 

Typical of the age the Stoic preached his philosophy as 
did the Epicurean; and this meant that he was a prophet 
rather than a scientist. Yet he too needed a philosophy 
in this enlightened age to persuade the learned and to re- 
fute the rival. It is interesting to see whither he went 
to get his philosophical apology, for genuine philosophical 
invention was becoming rapidly a thing of the past. He 
did not go to the followers of Plato and Aristotle but 
back to Heracleitus, as the Epicurean went to Democritus. 
The ultimate stuff of the world is an ever living and think- 
ing fire. Part of this divine fire is the soul, the vital prin- 
ciple and the reason in man. Of this living matter all 



THE PHILOSOPHICAL SCHOOLS 201 

things are made but in most things it is debased by having 
become earth, water, air and mist ; whereas in man's soul, 
in the heavenly world and in the divine formative agents, 
or seeds working throughout nature and controlling na- 
ture's development it is pure and genuinely divine. All 
things have come from this divine physis and in time all 
things will return being burnt up in the world conflagra- 
tion. In turn, world generation will follow anew and the 
divine fire will transform into the same world again. Thus 
cosmical history is a repetition of the same world, is cycli- 
cal. As in the older Ionic cosmologies the physis is both 
matter and god, is both living and thinking; so the Stoic 
identifies this divine fire with God and with the forms and 
the formative agents that make the world a cosmos. 
Working throughout the world it is Providence, the 
logos, the divine intermediary between the ultimate God 
and the world. Thus the doctrine of Heracleitus is easily 
adapted to justify the Stoic's belief in Providence and in 
the goodness of all the world. 1 

For further study read: 

Murray, G., The Stoic Philosophy, 1915; 

Bevan, E., Stoics and Sceptics, 1913; 

Hicks, R. D., Stoic and Epicurean, 1910; 

Bakewell, Source Book in Ancient Philosophy, 269-289, 
317-339. 
For more extensive study read: 

Arnold, E. V., Roman Stoicism, 1911; 

Seneca, On Benefits; 

Epictetus, Golden Sayings; 

Marcus Aurelius, Thoughts. 

5. Neoplatonism. — In the third and second centuries 
before Christ marked differences between the several phil- 

1 The Stoics made important contributions to logic, grammar and 
the theory of knowledge. 



202 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

osophical schools continued to exist and these schools re- 
mained predominantly Greek. By the beginning of the first 
century, however, the drift toward eclecticism and toward 
cosmopolitanism was bringing them closer and closer 
together and closer to Oriental ways of thinking. 1 This 
drift was away from the naturalism of the older Stoics and 
toward Plato and the Pythagoreans. This drift toward 
Pythagoreanism is to be seen especially in two doctrines. 
First, the soul is a distinct sort of stuff from the physical 
world, and its imprisonment in the body is an exile from 
its true home and a source of defilement. Therefore, the 
true work of the moral life is not, as the Stoic taught, to 
rationalize life freeing it from the instincts and emotions, 
but to purge the soul of the flesh, to rid it of defilement, 
to save the soul. Second, the Stoic had taught that nature 
is all one and divine as the Ionians had taught long be- 
fore; but now the eclectic philosopher returns to the dual- 
ism of the Pythagorean, the dualism ultimately between 
form and matter. The material world is evil and is not of 
God. God is pure form and the source of order in the 
world. Thus the whole drama of life is centered about 
the return of the world to God. Moreover, this dualism 
is not a problem merely of thought; for the heavenly world 
is visible. We behold it as we look up at the blue sky and 
the stars. There we literally see the divine world, the 
true home of the soul, the land of spirits, the place to which 
the pure souls will ascend when freed from the body. 

1 The most prominent and seemingly the most influential leader 
in this movement was Posidonius {ft. c. 100 B. C). Following him 
and possibly greatly indebted to him was the famous Jewish phi- 
losopher of Alexandria, Philo, who endeavored to combine Platon- 
ism, Judaism and other Oriental religious doctrines. Philo flourished 
about 10 A. D. Finally in Rome the great Roman statesman and 
writer Cicero (fl. c. 60 B. C), probably following the writings of 
Posidonius, does for Italy what Posidonius did for the eastern Greek 
Mediterranean world. 



THE PHILOSOPHICAL SCHOOLS 203 

There the souls spend their time " watching the stars go 
round. This to us might not seem an occupation of ever- 
fresh interest, but the idea of it apparently suggested the 
perfection of bliss to the men of those days." 

This eclecticism is the beginning of a movement that 
by the thud century after Christ gave rise in Alexandria 
to a philosophical school which combines the Greek and 
the Oriental philosophies and therewith brings ancient 
Mediterranean thought to one of its final stages. Thus 
precisely as in these days the emperors were bringing an- 
cient political history to its final stage by transforming 
the Roman empire into a universal state "bearing the 
cast of Oriental as well as Greco-Roman civilization," 
so was this school of thought combining the ancient wis- 
dom into a universal philosophy. This universal philoso- 
phy based on all preceding Greek thought and combining 
both Greek and Oriental culture is called Neoplatonism. 1 
" Just as the later Roman Empire was at once the supreme 
effort of the old world and the outcome of its exhaustion, 
so Neoplatonism is in one aspect the consummation, in 
another the collapse, of ancient philosophy. Never before 
in Greek or in Roman speculation had the consciousness 
of man's dignity and superiority to nature found such 
adequate expression; never before had real science and 
pure knowledge been so undervalued and despised by the 
leaders of culture as they were by the Neoplatonists. 
Judged from the standpoint of empirical science, philoso- 
phy passed its meridian in Plato and Aristotle, declined 
in the post-Aristotelian systems, and set in the darkness of 
Neoplatonism. But, from the religious and moral point 
of view, it must be admitted that the ethical 'mood' 

1 Its reputed founder was Ammonius Saccas (fl. c. 215 A. D.). 
Its greatest systematists were Plotinus (fl. c. 250 A. D.) and his 
pupil Porphyry (fl. c. 275 A. D.). In my account of Neoplatonism 
I am indebted especially to Harnack's writings. 



204 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

which Neoplatonism endeavored to create and maintain 
is the highest and purest ever reached by antiquity." * 
That is to say, in Neoplatonism Greek science goes bank- 
rupt in a religious idealism which renounces all interest 
in the world and which despairs of man's efforts to under- 
stand and to master this world, in an idealism which put 
faithfully and universally into practice would lead directly 
back to savagedom. Here unite Oriental thought and the 
religion of the Orphic worked out completely as a philoso- 
phy. Indeed, one may say that Greek philosophy ended, 
as it began in the West, an Orphic religion, and thus that 
this ancient Orphic conception of the world was never 
outgrown and discarded by the Mediterranean civiliza- 
tion. Briefly put, Neoplatonism as such contributed 
nothing to the scientific development of Europe, though 
it did carry within it to later generations some older Greek 
learning and traditions. Neoplatonism belongs rather 
to the history of European religion. 

Perhaps the clearest evidence of this non-scientific 
character is to be seen in its aforementioned belief and 
interest in the super-rational. Neoplatonism gives up two 
worlds in despair, the world of commonsense and the world 
of science, the world of sense-perception and the world 
of reason. By giving them up in despair I mean four 
things: first, that man fails to master these worlds by 
understanding them; second, that man cannot but fail, 
if he pursues the methods of commonsense and of science; 
third, that the world cannot be understood in terms of 
itself, that things are not to be taken literally, that they 
are not what they seem but are an allegory; and fourth, 
that this world is not important relatively to another 
world, that it is not man's true home and normal environ- 
ment but that the important world is above the moon. 
Now if life in this world below the moon is to be inter- 
1 Harnack, art. Neoplatonism, Encycl. Brit., 11th ed. 



THE PHILOSOPHICAL SCHOOLS 205 

preted in terms of a world other than the world of science 
and daily life, a superworld, it must be apprehended by 
methods of a radically different kind from those of science. 
It must be studied by faculties other than sense-perception 
and reason. The methods of apprehension are two: first, 
revelation coming from the superworld, and second, the 
winning of the heavenly vision through the escape of the 
soul from its worldly environment and from the flesh. 
Both these ways were followed by the Neoplatonist in 
common with the religious world of his age. On the one 
hand, he longed for a revelation from God and either 
constantly expected the coming of such a revelation or 
believed that it had already come, for example, in the ages 
past to the mysterious prophets of the far East. And this 
longing could be generalized into the doctrine that every- 
thing about him and all of past history were filled with 
messages from God. On the other hand, the Neoplatonist 
longed for the heavenly vision and struggled to gain it. 
This ecstatic vision is a mental condition that ancient 
psychology by no means understood and that modern 
psychology understands only in part. The whole subject 
belongs to the field of suggestion, hypnosis, auto-sugges- 
tion, dissociation, trance, hysteria and other forms of ab- 
normal mental life. I have called it the super-rational. 
The way thereto is fasting and prayer, or long meditation, 
or whatever can cause auto-hypnosis. In this condition 
the heavens open and the divine mysteries are uncovered, 
things are seen that no tongue can describe and that the 
mind of man cannot comprehend. 

Let not the student, however, judge from this that the 
experiences of the mystic are not to be respected. The 
mystic insight like the poetic insight has not only its 
right to be heard but also its unique message of great 
import. The mystics have given Europe her great spiritual 
and devotional classics and have profoundly enriched the 



206 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

spiritual life of the western world. Man has needs and 
longings that cannot be satisfied by science; and the days 
of the late Roman Empire were a time in which these long- 
ings were most intense, and in which the great minds were 
devoted to meeting a particular spiritual need, a time in 
which men cried aloud to God with St. Augustine: "Thou 
madest us for Thyself, and our heart is restless, until it 
repose in Thee." Man cannot live by bread alone. But, 
as Harnack has said, men knew this before Neoplatonism. 
The deeper truth that Neoplatonism added and enforced 
was: Man cannot live by knowledge alone. 

Here the pertinent question arises: Why did not Neo- 
platonism succeed in giving the Roman world a universal 
religion, why did it fail to do what Christianity succeeded 
in doing? The answer is, it was a religion of the philosoph- 
ically minded and not a folk religion. It asked the peo- 
ple to live a life of reflection and asceticism beyond their 
powers. It did not give them a view of God and heaven 
that was concrete enough. Its worship was a mood or 
an emotional state that was not directed toward concrete 
objects such as the folk will persist in worshipping. It 
lacked a great personal founder and his personality; and 
even with the patronage of the Roman emperor, Julian, it 
failed to excite the respect and obedience of the people. 

The most genuinely philosophical of the leaders of the 
Neoplatonic movement was Plotinus. After Plotinus 
Neoplatonism declined steadily toward the religion and 
theology of the masses. Accordingly let us study briefly 
Plotinus , philosophy. His doctrine is of course mysticism 
and typical of mysticism has two parts, a theoretical part 
and a practical part. The theoretical part explains the 
origin and the nature of the soul and its departure from its 
first estate. The practical part tells how the soul may 
make its way back to that first estate. To explain the 
origin of the soul requires Plotinus to give us a general 



THE PHILOSOPHICAL SCHOOLS 207 

theory of the world. There are three levels to reality that 
are prominent even as we casually look at the world and 
these were especially prominent to the ancient thinker. 
Below us is the world of lifeless material things, then next 
the world of living things and especially of man and his 
mind, third is what we often call the laws of nature which 
man's mind discovers and regards as the proper object of 
science. But is there not some higher level beyond and 
behind these laws? Yes, God is behind them. So there is 
a fourth level. Plotinus endeavored in the notions of his 
age to show men the character of this world of the four 
levels. First is God or the ultimate being. He is beyond 
the laws of nature, the subject-matter of science; therefore 
He cannot be described in the terms of science, or rational 
thought. He is super-rational, which means that every 
possible concept that we use to define Him fails. Even 
the word " exist" is inadequate. God is beyond all that is 
denoted by such words as good, exist, and infinite. The 
same inadequacy is present in calling Him the creator, for 
creation is a process beyond science and beyond even the 
notion named process. Thus the world came from God, 
but in a way we cannot conceive. Its creation cost God 
nothing for it comes perpetually from God without alter- 
ing God, without His moving and without the force in the 
Godhead diminishing. The first thing that came from 
God was the second level, the laws of nature, that is, the 
world of the reason. From this in turn came the third 
level, a level between the world of material objects and the 
laws of nature, or, to use Plotinus' term, soul. Thus came 
the souls of men which make them capable of dealing 
with the things of the reason on the one hand and the 
material things on the other hand; and thus came the 
world-soul, the great power that in the ordinary sense is 
the world-creator. The world-soul was needed, we may 
say, to get the laws of nature incarnated in the material 



208 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

world so that it would no longer be a world of formless, 
qualityless, characterless matter but the world of form and 
order, the world of things, the cosmos. All then ulti- 
mately has come from God; but intervening between God 
and the lowest level are these two necessary orders of being, 
the laws or forms and the souls. Coming from God, the 
world is good and its so-called evil is a necessary element 
which amounts simply to a negative characteristic to be 
identified with formless matter. Matter, the ultimate 
neutral characterless stuff, does not get perfectly formed 
and so its evil or imperfection is precisely this absence of 
perfection. Or put in other words, as we descend through 
the levels from God we pass farther from God and the 
divine is present in the world to a less and less degree. 
In still other words, the world is a scale from the ineffable 
Godhead to the material world about us, in which the di- 
vine gradually decreases from infinity to zero. Finally, 
in this world that owes its existence or form to the ultimate 
being is a tendency to return whence it has come, a longing 
for the heavenly home. 

This introduces the practical philosophy, or the way 
back to God. It is a matter of retracing our steps, and as 
there have been stages away from God so there are stages 
back to God. These stages are an interesting index of the 
spiritual and moral life of the age. First, and lowest, is 
the life of the good citizen, the civil virtues; but these do 
not purify the soul. Second, are the virtues that free the 
soul from sensuality and lead it back from the material 
world to the world of science, to spirituality. These vir- 
tues are attained by the ascetic life. But it is not enough 
to become spiritual and to be free from matter or sin, for 
there is a still higher stage than the reason, there is God. 
Third, then, is the highest stage, man is to become God. 
This stage is to be reached through the contemplative 
study of God, not by science or reason, which will carry us 



THE PHILOSOPHICAL SCHOOLS 209 

no farther than to the forms, but by super-rational con- 
templation and ecstasy through which the soul quite 
escapes from all but its divine nature. In short, the soul 
must "pass through a spiritual curriculum. Beginning 
with the contemplation of corporeal things in their multi- 
plicity and harmony, it then retires upon itself and with- 
draws into the depths of its own being, rising thence to 
the reason, nous, the world of ideas. But even there it 
does not find the Highest, the One; it still hears a voice 
saying, 'not we have made ourselves. ' The last stage is 
reached when, in the highest tension and concentration, 
beholding in silence and utter forgetfulness of all things, 
it is able as it were to lose itself. Then it may see God, 
the fountain of life, the source of being, the origin of all 
good, the root of the soul. In that moment it enjoys the 
highest indescribable bliss; it is as it were swallowed up of 
divinity, bathed in the light of eternity." 1 We are told 
that Plotinus attained to this ecstatic union with God at 
least four times. 

Here we behold a way of life not peculiar to this one 
school but to the age and long after the age to medieval 
Christianity, a way of life in which the thing of supreme 
value is the vita contemplativa, the life of prayer and medi- 
tation about heavenly things, and the mystic vision of 
the ecstatic saint. According to this philosophy of life 
man is not of this world but of another world and the 
supreme enterprise of his life is to get back to the world 
to which he belongs. To be virtuous is not to be a good 
and efficient citizen, for that is but to take the first step and 
therefore to take one liable to be thought lightly of. The 
highest virtue is rather to crucify the flesh and to rise freed 
from the body into a world that passes human understand- 
ing. 

These three schools, the Epicurean, the Stoic and the 

1 Harnack, ibid. 



210 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

Neoplatonic, each endeavored to give the intellectual man 
a way of life. The two earlier schools evidently formed 
a transitional stage to the last, and even in the days of 
their greatest prosperity had to struggle against religious 
influences which indicated whither the thought of the 
Mediterranean world was tending ever more strongly. 
They themselves soon disappeared in the general eclecti- 
cism of the first century before and after Christ and this 
eclectic philosophy kept moving in the direction to be 
represented in the end by the later Hellenistic-Oriental 
religions of the Roman Empire, by Neoplatonism and by 
Christianity. 

For further study read: 

Encycl. Brit., 11th ed., art. Neoplatonism; 

Bakewell, Source Book in Ancient Philosophy, 340-393; 

Dill, S., Roman Society in the Last Century of the Western 
Empire, 2d ed., 1899, Books I, II and V. 
For more extensive study read: 

Whittaker, T., The Neoplatonists, 1901; 

Harnack, A., History of Dogma, 1899 (Appendix on Neo- 
platonism) ; 

Dill, S., Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius, 
2d ed., 1905; 

Inge, W. R., Christian Mysticism, 1899. 



CHAPTER XVII 

THE ROMAN LAW 

1. Introductory. — Thus far it has been possible to 
record the history of ancient thought without studying 
the part played by Rome; and this has been possible, 
because Rome contributed virtually nothing to those 
branches of science which we have considered. To another 
branch of ancient thought, however, to legal science, Rome 
did contribute pre-eminently. In fact, Rome rendered 
two chief services in the intellectual development of Eu- 
rope. First, Rome received and assimilated many ele- 
ments of Hellenistic culture; and much of what she as- 
similated, she carried to the distant provinces of the West 
and North. Thus northern Italy, Gaul, Britain, Spain 
and Northern Africa were receiving a Greco-Roman 
culture during the last days of the Republic and during 
the centuries of Imperial Rome until the Roman church 
succeeded the Roman people as the teacher of the Western 
world. Second, through one of the greatest achievements 
of man's intellect, the Roman private law, Rome gave 
both the ancient and the modern world an enduring legal 
philosophy. 

2. The entrance of Hellenic culture into Rome. — As 
Rome became mistress of southern Italy and developed 
into a great commercial center with its foreign population 
she began to meet Greek culture. Later as she became 
mistress of Greece and of the remnants of the Alexandrine 
empire she became also a resort of Greek teachers and 
not many decades later she herself was sending her own 

211 



212 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

gifted youth to the philosophical schools of the East. At 
first, the constitutionally conservative and provincial 
Roman despised the foreign learning and refinement; but 
gradually " conquered Greece conquered her conqueror," 
and by the closing years of the Republic Greek philosophy 
had become an indispensable part of the higher culture of 
the intellectual Roman. 

However, "the Roman thinkers never produced an 
independent system of thought; they were eclectics, taking 
from different systems what most appealed to them. Even 
when they accepted a sj^stem as a whole, they modified it 
to suit their taste. They had no patience with subtleties, 
sophistries and paradoxes, and avoided the hair-split- 
tings and fine distinctions in which the Greeks reveled; 
nor were they fond of controversies and disputations. 
They were not profound thinkers, but were governed by 
commonsense; 'they sought and found in philosophy 
nothing but a rule of conduct and a means of govern- 
ment.' " 1 

For further study read: 

Duff, J. W., A Literary History of Rome, 1909, 18-38, 
92-117, 349-397; 

Fowler, W. W., The Religious Experience of the Roman 
People, 1911, 357-472; 

Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods. 
For more extensive study read: 

Fowler, W. W., Social Life at Rome, 1909; 

Dill, S., Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius; 

Fowler, W. W., Rome (Home University Library). 

3. The development of the Roman private law. — The 

earliest form to which scholars can trace the Roman 
private law is a body of customs such as one finds among 
any barbaric people. On the one hand, it is largely a mat- 

1 Thilly, History of Philosophy, pp. 119 f. 



THE ROMAN LAW 213 

ter of custom between clans and families in an agricultural 
and patriarchal people with the individual as yet not a 
legal person. On the other hand, it is largely a matter 
of ritual with the implicit legal principle as yet hardly 
perceived. In the course of its earlier development both 
of these aspects were held to tenaciously and they dis- 
appeared almost entirely only after centuries of develop- 
ment. By that time the Roman law had become a simple, 
harmonious, highly enlightened and explicit body of legal 
procedure and principles, a system of laws fitted to be the 
legal guide of the mightiest of empires populated by many 
and various peoples and to be later the legal guide and 
the source of legal inspiration to modern Europe. That 
the ancient customs and ritual of the Roman families and 
clans became the Roman law of the Empire was due to a 
group of happy circumstances; for it was not the result 
of foresight but the result of a genius to rule compelled 
to solve complex political and social problems one after 
another through centuries. 

The original Roman law, the Quiritary law, jus Quiri- 
tium, or jus civile, was the law solely of the Roman people, 
the later patricians. It was strictly a law between fami- 
nes with its famous patria potestas making the head of the 
family the only legal person and leaving him supreme over 
all matters belonging strictly within the family. Thus, 
doubtless, the Roman law might have remained, had not 
Rome become the home of more and more numerous 
foreigners, the plebeians. These foreigners came to Rome 
as members of states now under Roman hegemony, they 
came to Rome as the safest home of trade and industry, 
and they came as merchants from distant lands with whom 
Rome had treaties of trade. At first Rome could leave 
them to their own customs and usages; but as their num- 
ber increased, as their business relations with Romans 
became more complex, as they became permanent resi- 



214 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

dents, as they became land-owners and finally as they 
became a necessary military asset, the Roman state had 
to assume legal jurisdiction over them. Moreover, these 
plebeians were not themselves passive, but as is usual 
with a powerful alien population began to struggle for and 
to gain for themselves political and legal rights. In short, 
a large part of the history of the Roman Republic for cen- 
turies is composed of the struggles abroad with foreign 
states and of the struggles at home between patrician and 
plebeian. 

Compelled to face this complex problem and with the 
native capacity to solve it, Rome, in the person of her 
prcetor peregrinus and behind him of her students of the 
law, the jurisconsults, of whom the prsetor holding his 
office for but a year was in fact merely a representative, 
brought gradually into existence the jus gentium. As 
this jus gentium developed and as the plebeians and Ital- 
ians became Roman citizens the new law tended to sup- 
plant the older law and to become in fact the common law 
of the Roman people. 

May I quote at length from Maine's admirable descrip- 
tion of this development? "The most superficial student 
of Roman history must be struck by the extraordinary 
degree in which the fortunes of the republic were affected 
by the presence of foreigners, under different names, on 
her soil. The causes of this immigration are discernible 
enough at a later period, for we can readily understand 
why men of all races should flock to the mistress of the 
world; but the same phenomenon of a large population of 
foreigners and denizens meets us in the very earliest 
records of the Roman State. . . . Whatever were the 
circumstances to which it was attributable, the foreign 
element in the commonwealth determined the whole course 
of Roman history, which, at all its stages, is little more 
than a narrative of conflicts between a stubborn national- 



THE ROMAN LAW 215 

ity and an alien population. ... In the early Roman 
republic the principle of the absolute exclusion of foreigners 
pervaded the civil law no less than the constitution. The 
alien or denizen could have no share in any institution 
supposed to be coeval with the state. He could not have 
benefit of Quiritarian law. . . . Probably half as a meas- 
ure of police and half in furtherance of commerce juris- 
diction was first assumed in disputes to which the parties 
were either foreigners or a native and a foreigner. The 
assumption of such a jurisdiction brought with it the 
immediate necessity of discovering some principles on 
which the questions to be adjudicated upon could be 
settled, and the principles applied to this object by the 
Roman lawyers were eminently characteristic of the time. 
They refused to decide the new cases by pure Roman civil 
law. They refused to apply the law of the particular state 
from which the foreign litigant came. The expedient to 
which they resorted was that of selecting the rules of law 
common to Rome and to the different Italian communities 
in which the immigrants were born. In other words, 
they set themselves to form a system answering to the 
primitive and literal meaning of jus gentium, that is, law 
common to all nations. Jus gentium was, in fact, the sum 
of the common ingredients in the customs of the old Ital- 
ian tribes, for they were all the nations whom the Romans 
had the means of observing, and who sent successive 
swarms of immigrants to Roman soil. Whenever a partic- 
ular usage was seen to be practised by a large number of 
separate races in common it was set down as part of the 
law common to all nations, or jus gentium. . . . 

"The circumstances of the origin of the jus gentium are 
probably a sufficient safeguard against the mistake of 
supposing that the Roman lawyers had any special respect 
for it. It was the fruit in part of their disdain for all 
foreign law, and in part of their disinclination to give the 



216 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

foreigner the advantage of their own indigenous jus civile. 
It is true that we, at the present day, should probably 
take a very different view of the jus gentium, if we were 
performing the operation which was effected by the Roman 
jurisconsults. We should attach some vague superiority 
or precedence to the element which we had thus discerned 
underlying and pervading as great a variety of usage. 
We should have a sort of respect for rules and principles 
so universal. . . . But the results to which modern ideas 
conduct the observer are, as nearly as possible, the reverse 
of those which were instinctively brought home to the 
primitive Roman. . . . The parts of jurisprudence which 
he looked upon with affection were exactly those which a 
modern theorist leaves out of consideration as accidental 
and transitory; the solemn gestures of the mancipation; 
the nicely adjusted questions and answers of the verbal 
contract; the endless formalities of pleading and procedure. 
The jus gentium was merely a system forced on his atten- 
tion by a political necessity. He loved it as little as he 
loved the foreigners from whose institutions it was derived 
and for whose benefit it was intended. A complete revo- 
lution in his ideas was required before it could challenge 
his respect, but so complete was it when it did occur, that 
the true reason why our modern estimate of the jus gen- 
tium differs from that which has just been described, is 
that both modern jurisprudence and modern philosophy 
have inherited the matured views of the later jurisconsults 
on this subject. There did come a time when, from an 
ignoble appendage of the jus civile, the jus gentium came 
to be considered a great though as yet imperfectly devel- 
oped model to which all law ought as far as possible to 
conform. This crisis arrived when the Greek theory of a 
law of nature was applied to the practical Roman admin- 
istration of the law common to all nations." 

As has been mentioned the official instrument through 



THE ROMAN LAW 217 

which all of this was brought about was the pro&or peri- 
grinus. Now it was a precautionary custom of the Roman 
people to oblige "every magistrate whose duties had any 
tendency to expand their sphere, to publish, on com- 
mencing his year of office, an edict or proclamation, in 
which he declared the manner in which he intended to 
administer his department. The praetor fell under the 
rule with other magistrates; but as it was necessarily 
impossible to construct each year a separate system of 
principles, he seems to have regularly republished his 
predecessor's edict with such additions and changes as the 
exigency of the moment or his own views of the law com- 
pelled him to introduce. The praetor's proclamation, 
thus lengthened by a new portion every year, obtained the 
name of the edictum perpetuum, that is, the continuous or 
unbroken edict. The immense length to which it extended, 
together perhaps with some distaste for its necessarily 
disorderly texture, caused the practice of increasing it to 
be stopped in the year of Salvius Julianus, who occupied 
the magistracy in the reign of the emperor Hadrian. The 
edict of that praetor embraced therefore the whole body 
of equity jurisprudence, which it probably disposed in 
new and symmetrical order, and the perpetual edict 
is therefore often cited in Roman law as the Edict of 
Julianus. 

"What were the limitations by which these extensive 
powers of the praetor were restrained? How was authority 
so little definite to be reconciled with a settled condition 
of society and law? . . . The praetor was a jurisconsult 
himself, or a person entirely in the hands of advisers who 
were jurisconsults, and it is probable that every Roman 
lawyer waited impatiently for the time when he should 
fill or control the great judicial magistracy. In the inter- 
val, his tastes, feelings, prejudices, and degree of enlight- 
enment were inevitably those of his own order, and the 



218 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

qualifications which he ultimately brought to office were 
those which he had acquired in the practice and study of 
his profession. . . . 

"The nature of the measures attributed to Salvius Ju- 
lianus has been much disputed. Whatever they were, 
their effects on the Edict are sufficiently plain. It ceased 
to be extended by annual additions, and henceforward 
the equity jurisprudence of Rome was developed by the 
labours of a succession of great jurisconsults who fill with 
their writings the interval between the reign of Hadrian 
and the reign of Alexander Severus. A fragment of the 
wonderful system which they built up survives in the Pan- 
dects of Justinian, and supplies evidence that their works 
took the form of treatises on all parts of Roman law, but 
chiefly that of commentaries on the Edict. . . . 

"The period of jurists ends with Alexander Severus. 
From Hadrian to that emperor the improvement of law 
was carried on, as it is at the present moment in most 
continental countries, partly by approved commentaries 
and partly by direct legislation. But in the reign of Alex- 
ander Severus the power of growth in Roman equity seems 
to be exhausted, and the succession of jurisconsults comes 
to a close. The remaining history of the Roman law is the 
history of the imperial constitutions, and, at the last, of 
attempts to codify what had now become the unwieldy 
body of Roman jurisprudences. We have the latest and 
most celebrated experiment of this kind in the Corpus 
Juris of Justinian." * 

4. The jus naturale. — "The jus naturale, or law of 
nature, is simply the jus gentium or law common to nations 
seen in the light of a peculiar theory." This theory is the 
law of nature that we have met in the doctrine of the 
Stoics and which had a long history in the earlier periods 
of Greek thought. In short, in the law of nature Roman 
1 Maine, Ancient Law, Chap. III. 



THE ROMAN LAW 219 

legal thought and Greek ethical thought meet. Of the Hel- 
lenistic philosophies that began to make their way to 
Rome as early as the second century before Christ Stoicism 
was the most easily welcomed. From the first century 
before Christ through the era of the Antonine Caesars 
when Roman Stoicism had its most famous disciples and 
through the very era when Roman equity was reaching 
its highest stage of development there was almost an 
alliance between the Roman lawyers and the Roman Stoic 
philosophers. This does not imply that legal rules were 
derived from Stoic doctrine; but it indicates the spirit 
behind the work of the jurist and the power that helped 
him to emancipate himself from the older legal tradition 
and to simplify and to generalize the Roman law into the 
jus gentium. 1 Again the idea of the law of nature gave to 
the jus gentium all the " prestige of philosophical author- 
ity" and associated it with the ideal state of man, believed 
by the philosopher to be the life in accord with nature. 
In a sentence, the influence of Hellenistic philosophy upon 
Roman law was "that the spirit of critical enquiry aroused 
and fostered by literary and philosophical study, seriously 
and conscientiously undertaken, contributed greatly to 
promote a new departure in jurisprudence that became 
very marked in the time of Cicero — the desire to subordi- 
nate form to substance, the word spoken to the will it 
was meant to manifest, the abstract rule to the individual 
case to which it was proposed to apply it." However, the 
jus naturale and the jus gentium must not be identified. 
The former was a philosophical principle, a general ethical 

1 "The ideas of simplification and generalization had always been 
associated with the conception of nature; simplicity, symmetry, 
and intelligibility came therefore to be regarded as the characteristic 
of a good legal system, and the taste for involved language, multi- 
plied ceremonials, and useless difficulties disappeared altogether." 
The quotations in this section are from Goudy, art. "Roman Law," 
Encycl. Brit., 11th ed. 



220 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

attitude, an ideal. Its influence upon the law was by its 
spirit rather than by any incorporation of its specific 
principles. 1 In other words, the point of contact between 
the old jus gentium and the law of nature was equity, and 
equity meant the constant levelling or removing of irregu- 
larities and the eliminating of a multitude of arbitrary 
distinctions between classes of men and kinds of property 

1 "Voigt thus summarizes the characteristics of this speculative 
Roman jus naturale: — (1) its potential universal applicability to all 
men, (2) among all peoples, (3) at all times, and (4) its correspond- 
ence with the innate conviction of right. Its propositions, as gath- 
ered from the pages of the jurists of the period, he formulates thus : — 
(1) recognition of the claims of blood; (2) duty of faithfulness to 
engagements; (3) apportionment of advantage and disadvantage, 
gain and loss, according to the standard of equity; (4) supremacy of 
the voluntatis ratio over the words or form in which the will is mani- 
fested." 

"It was regard for the first that, probably pretty early in the prin- 
cipate, led the praetors to place emancipated children on a footing 
of equality with unemancipated in the matter of succession, and to 
admit to succession collateral kindred through females as well as 
those related through males; and that, in the reigns of Hadrian and 
Marcus Aurelius respectively, induced the senate to give a mother 
a preferred right of succession to her children, and vice versa. It 
was respect for the second that led to the recognition of the validity 
of what was called a natural obligation, — one that, because of some 
defect of form or something peculiar in the position of the parties, was 
ignored by the jus civile and incapable of being made the ground of 
an action for its enforcement, yet might be given effect to indirectly 
by other equitable remedies. Regard for the third was nothing new 
in the jurisprudence of the period; the Republic had already ad- 
mitted as a principle that a man was not to be unjustifiably enriched 
at another's cost; the jurists of the empire, however, gave it a wider 
application than before, and used it as a key to the solution of many 
a difficult question in the domain of the law of contract. As for the 
fourth, it was one that had to be applied with delicacy; for the volun- 
tas could not in equity be preferred to its manifestation to the preju- 
dice of other parties who in good faith had acted upon the latter. 
We have many evidences of the skilful way in which the matter was 
handled, speculative opinion being held in check by considerations 
of individual interest and general utility." 



THE ROMAN LAW 221 

recognized by the old jus civile. Thus equity meant sim- 
plifying and generalizing the law. 

Yet right here lay one of the greatest dangers to which 
the Roman jurist was exposed, a danger that the Greek 
thinker did not escape, but that the Roman did. The 
Greek was essentially a theorist but the Roman was what 
in our day is called a pragmatist. The Greek generalized 
the law so that it became a mere general ethical ideal 
that threw little light on the complex problem of litigation 
and justice between man and man; whereas the Roman 
lawyer never lost sight of the complex problem and in 
laying down his ideals never set aside the concrete rules 
of the law. 1 Rather he sought the ideal precisely in these 
concrete and multitudinous specific cases of rights and 
obligations. Had he not done so, the Roman law could 
never have become the legal guide of Europe then and in 
the centuries to come but would have been as uninfluential 
as the noble but impractical idealism of the Stoic creed. 
The cause of this difference between Greek and Roman, 
apart from national temperament, was perhaps, on the 
one hand, the rapidity with which the Greek passed from 
the barbaric law of the past to the Greek constitutions and 
morals of the golden age, and, on the other hand, the 

1 "A remark of Voigt's on the subject is well worthy of being kept 
in view, that the risk which arose from the setting up of the precepts 
of a speculative jus naturale, as derogating from the rules of the jus 
civile, was greatly diminished through the position held by the jurists 
of the early Empire. Their jus respondendi made them in a sense 
legislative organs of the state, so that, in introducing principles of the 
jus naturale, or of cequum et bonum, they at the same moment defined 
them and gave them the force of law. They were, he says, ' philoso- 
phers in the sphere of law, searchers after the ultimate truth; but, 
while they — usually in reference to a concrete case — sought out the 
truth and applied what they had found, they combined with the 
freedom from constraint of speculation, the life-freshness of practice, 
and the power of assuring the operativeness of their abstract proposi- 
tions.'" 



222 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

slowness and practical urgency that mark the development 
of Roman law. In short, if the Roman law tells us to 
give to every man his due, it does not stop with this ab- 
stract ideal but it tells us in concrete detail what is a man's 
due. This the Greek moralist failed to do. That the 
Roman jurists did so, makes their contribution to the 
intellectual history of man comparable in worth with that 
made by the Greek scientists. 1 

For further study read: 

Dunning, W. A., A History of Political Theories, 1902, 

chapter IV; 
Maine, H. S., Ancient Law, 5th ed., 1873, chapters II-IV; 
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter 

XLIV; 
Smith, M., Roman Law in the English Universities, 

Classical Weekly, 1916, 9, 218-220. 
For more extensive study read: 

Bryce, J., Studies in History and Jurisprudence, 1901, 71- 

123,556-606,745-781; 
Sohm, R. (transl. Ledlie), The Institutes of Roman Law, 

1907, especially Part I; 
Goudy, art. Roman Law, in Encycl. Brit., 11th ed.; 
Muirhead, J., Historical Introduction to the Private Law 

of Rome, 2d ed. 1899; 
Jhering, R., Geist des romischen Rechts, 1894-1907. 

1 Among famous Roman jurists were the following: — Cicero (fl. c. 
60 B. C.) in the last days of the Republic. His writings were quite 
influential in the days of the Empire; Labeo (fl. c. 10 B. C.) under the 
emperor Augustus; Julianus (fl. c. 140 A. D.) under Hadrian and 
Antoninus Pius; Gaius (fl. c. 150 A. D.); Papinianus (fl. c. 200 A. D.) 
and Ulpianus (fl. c. 210 A. D.), his pupil; Paulus (fl. c. 210 A, D.); 
and Modestinus (fl. c. 250 A. D.). 



CHAPTER XVIII 

THE CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY 

1. Introductory. — The extreme hypothesis that Chris- 
tianity is the outcome merely of general Oriental and 
Hellenistic religious tendencies is rejected by the best 
scholarship; for according to this scholarship both a real 
personality and an original and deep personal religious 
experience underlie Christianity. Moreover, the original 
gospel of Jesus is remarkably free from Hellenistic phi- 
losophy, though it presupposes of course the contemporary 
religion of Judea and the holy writings of the Jewish 
Church. However, what is true of Christianity at its 
source is no longer true of Christianity, the universal re- 
ligion, the religion of the Roman Empire of the fourth and 
later centuries; for Christianity had by that time become 
twofold in nature. On the one hand, still preserved in it 
was the deep loyalty to the historic Jesus and to His 
gospel; but on the other hand, so large an element of 
Oriental and Hellenistic religion and philosophy had 
entered it that Christianity had become, not only because 
of its membership but also because of its organization and 
theology, a Mediterranean religion. It had become the 
Holy Roman, or universal Church. 

These facts indicate in historic Christianity two distinct 
tendencies because of which, no matter how completely 
united, the church persists in tending to break apart. The 
older tendency exhibited in a large part of the New Testa- 
ment record teaches a law to govern men's lives and prom- 
ises for obedience to this law a blessed immortality. The 

223 



224 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

second tendency, distinctly Hellenistic and Oriental and ex- 
hibited already in the Pauline and Johannine parts of the 
New Testament, teaches a way by which man's corrupt and 
fallen nature is to be saved from the flesh and is to be made 
again holy, spiritual and divine. The working out of 
this latter doctrine as the solution of a great philosophical 
problem gave rise to the Christian philosophy and the 
working out of this doctrine as a great religious principle 
gave rise to the religion of the universal church of the 
Mediterranean world. 

The tendency to find in Christianity merely a law of 
life taught by the divine Master threatened at first to make 
the new religion only a Jewish sect and to restrain it from 
becoming a universal religion. In later days it threatened 
to interpret the nature of the Christ as merely that of a 
created divine agent by which the ultimate God revealed 
His will and truth to men. In its extreme form this tend- 
ency was against all other religious tendencies both within, 
and without the Church and therefore was condemned as 
heresy and overcome. 

The tendency to find in Christianity not only a law of 
life but chiefly a supernatural means by which man's 
fallen nature might be restored and made divine led some 
believers from the beginning to preach Christianity as a 
religion of both Jew and Gentile and to eliminate from it 
its associated Jewish characteristics. The first great 
leader in this broader enterprise was St. Paul, the Apostle 
to the Gentiles. He was well fitted for this noble mission. 
A Jew trained in the strictest school of the Jewish law he 
grew up in Tarsus, one of the thoroughly Hellenistic cities 
of Asia Minor and in an environment that had earlier 
absorbed the Stoic conception of the world and the Stoic 
doctrine of life. Christ thus came to appeal to St. Paul 
not only as the fulfiller of the Jewish law but as the one 
desired and expected of all nations. Therefore the mission 






THE CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY 225 

of Jesus seemed to him to be to all peoples, and he hoped 
to live himself to carry the divine message to the ends of 
the earth. He did help to carry it as far as Rome. 

As the former tendency led the Church to conceive of 
Christ as the agent of God, as a created being between 
God and the world and identifiable with the logos of Greek 
philosophy; so the latter tendency led the Church to con- 
ceive the Master as the incarnate God, identified it is 
true with the logos but also with God, and to conceive 
of Him as the means by which man is to be united again 
with God and by which man's fallen nature is to be raised 
again to its original divine character. From the former 
point of view the believer found in Christ the Jewish 
Messiah and teacher sent from God ; from the latter point 
of view the believer found in Him the redeemer and the 
mystical and sacramental instrument by which God's 
grace is given to man. This latter point of view finally 
became accepted in the fourth century as orthodox and 
apostolic after a bitter struggle with its rival. It is es- 
pecially associated with the great church-father Athana- 
sius. Its great rival was in those days named Arianism 
after another leader, Arius. These two tendencies in Chris- 
tianity, the orthodox and the mystical, on the one hand, 
and the ethical and the non-mystical, on the other, gave 
rise also to two radically different views of religion and of 
the Church. The one emphasizes the sacraments as the 
means by which man is to be redeemed and regards the 
Church as a divine agent and instrument created by God 
and coming from heaven to bring God's grace to man. 
The other emphasizes the Christian morality and the 
establishment of God's kingdom on earth and regards the 
Church merely as the invisible company of all the faithful. 
Evidently modern Christianity and the Christian thought 
of to-day exhibit both these rival tendencies as still per- 
sisting and as still dividing Christians. 



226 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

Two other characteristics of early Christianity must be 
emphasized. The first was its hostility to culture, learning 
and philosophy. The second was its intolerance of other 
religions. Christianity grew rapidly in the great centers 
of population especially among the slaves and the poor 
and only slowly made its way into the aristocratic, cul- 
tured and ruling classes. Of course it always had great 
minds among its leaders but these leaders themselves 
exhibited a hostility to "the wisdom of this world," to the 
"learning of this world which God had made foolishness/ ' 
and they boasted of the wisdom hidden from the wise and 
prudent and revealed unto babes. Hence in time came the 
famous mottoes, credo quia absurdum and credo ut intel- 
ligam. However, the day dawned when, in spite of opposi- 
tion, another spirit began to manifest itself. Christianity 
had to defend itself and make itself understood by the 
learned and the rulers and had to satisfy the intellects of 
its own thoughtful followers. This movement began with 
the so-called Apologists of the second century and in the 
third century in Alexandria developed into a distinctly 
philosophical school studying the pagan philosophers and 
basing Christian theology explicitly upon a Greek phil- 
osophical foundation. The result was that in a century the 
orthodox theology was as truly a Greco-Roman philosophy 
as was its great rival, Neoplatonism, and was deeply in- 
debted to precisely the same philosophical sources as was 
the latter. This could not have been different, for the intel- 
lectual leaders had to use the philosophy of the age and 
there was but the one, — the Hellenistic. 

The remaining characteristic to be emphasized is the 
Christian intolerance toward other religions. This intol- 
erance the Christian shared with the Jew; but there re- 
mained a great difference between their standpoints. 
Judaism was a national religion and was treated by the 
Roman statesman with somewhat the same wise tolerance 



THE CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY 227 

with which he treated other national cults and religions; 
but Christianity was a new sect and its unwillingness to 
conform to the few simple requirements of the state religion 
could be interpreted only as the maddest obstinacy and 
as downright treason. A different hostility arose against 
Christianity on the part of the masses. It denied their 
gods and it denounced their circus; and they in turn classed 
it together with Epicureanism and Judaism as atheism. 
But the intolerance of the Christian is important to 
explain not only the persecutions in an age of great reli- 
gious tolerance but also the very survival of Christianity. 
Like all men of these days the Christian believed in higher 
powers, or demons; but he identified the gods of the Gen- 
tiles with the evil demons with whom he could have no 
relations without peril to his salvation and with the very 
superhuman powers that had crucified his Lord and against 
whom he had to fight. Moreover, his intolerance inspired 
his remarkable missionary spirit which was almost invis- 
ibly carrying Christianity into all lands and even into 
Caesar's household. In other words, had the early Chris- 
tian compromised with the many religious movements and 
cults of his day, the tremendous forces that did indeed 
transform and obliterate many elements of the original 
faith and practice, would have made Christianity disap- 
pear altogether in the general religion of the Greco-Roman 
world, instead of keeping it in marked relief as a new power 
within the Mediterranean religion. 

2. The development of Christian philosophy. 1 — We 
have seen that at first Christians felt no need for a specula- 

1 Among the prominent Christian philosophers, or fathers of the 
Church, the following have especially contributed to the develop- 
ment of the ancient Christian philosophy, or have through their 
writings especially influenced later Christian thought in the West: 
Justin Martyr (fl. c. 140) ; Irenseus (ft. c. 175) ; Tertullian (ft. c. 200); 
Clement of Alexandria (fl. c. 195); Origen (fl. c. 225); Cyprian (fl. c. 
250); Eusebius (fl. c. 300); Athanasius (fl. c. 335); Basil (fl. c. 370); 



228 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

tive, or reflective philosophical formulation of their re- 
ligious principles. Rather they felt not only content with 
the popular philosophy which they possessed as children 
of their age but also distrustful of the culture of the learned 
classes. Further, we have seen that the need for philoso- 
phy arose only gradually and was first markedly present 
in the third century, and was due to the following circum- 
stances: — First, Christianity had to be defended before 
the court of the ruling and cultured classes; second, the 
Apostolic tradition had to be defined and defended against 
novel or extraneous doctrines, called heresies; third, men 
trained in the philosophical schools were beginning to 
appear among the converts to Christianity and in becom- 
ing Christians these men continued the "way of life" of 
the philosopher; finally, the mere fact that the Christian 
Church included men of high intellectual endowment and 
that the great Christian centers of the Mediterranean 
world were highly enlightened and philosophically stimu- 
lating made it impossible to keep Christianity merely a 
religion and not also a theology. 

In other words and expressed at greater length: the 
apostolic tradition had to be kept intact against the en- 
croachment of the many foreign religious and philosophical 
influences which from the beginning threatened to over- 
whelm it; and yet no man could live in the Greco-Roman 
world and not be immersed in Hellenistic and Oriental 
thought and religion. Hence there were heresies both 
without and within the church which had to be combatted. 
Moreover, the church had to define and systematize her 
doctrines for the instruction of her own people especially 
along those lines where, because of the thought of the day, 
her children were most liable to be led astray. In particu- 

Gregory of Nyssa (fl. c. 370); Gregory of Nazianzus (fl. c. 370); 
Ambrose (fl. c. 380); Jerome (fl. c. 380); Augustine (fl. c. 400); Greg- 
ory the Great (fl. c. 580). 



THE CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY 229 

lar, the church was compelled to define her peculiar doc- 
trine of the nature of the redeemer, the incarnate God, 
and to identify Him with the ultimate God; for this was a 
doctrine that seemed to the Hellenistic philosopher an 
absurdity and to the Hellenistic mystic a religious back- 
sliding. This doctrine was finally declared to be of the 
orthodox faith at the great council of Nicea in 325. In 
later councils the church defined also the twofold nature 
of Christ by declaring Him to be very God and very man, 
two complete natures in the one person. To complete her 
doctrine she had also to declare her own nature and mis- 
sion in the world and to define the means of the souPs 
salvation. This she did by teaching man's complete fall 
from his original state and his present utter helplessness 
to save himself by his own efforts. His only method of 
salvation is through God's grace and the church's sacra- 
ments. The church is thus the divine agent God has sent 
into the world and the only means through which man can 
be saved. The church is the city of God that is above 
the earthly city, the ultimate vice-gerent of God in whose 
hands are the keys of hell and heaven. 

The first movement within and without the Church 
against which the Christian thinker was forced to contend 
was the religion called Gnosticism. Gnosticism was an 
older religion than Christianity, of Persian origin with 
Hellenistic additions. It shared with the other religious 
movements of the periods the chief characteristics of Hel- 
lenistic religion and therefore shared these with Chris- 
tianity also. There was the longing for redemption, the 
tendency toward asceticism, the belief in the fall of man, 
the undervaluing of science and the overvaluing of the 
super-rational, and finally the expressed need for revela- 
tion, sacraments, initiations, magic and allegory. As 
distinct from Christianity Gnosticism tended, as a Persian 
religion, to be strongly dualistic, that is, to believe that two 



230 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

principles, the good and the evil, are at work in the world ; 
and as distinct from Christianity it tended to dissociate 
its scheme of redemption from the historic Christ and to 
associate the God of the Old Testament with the evil god 
rather than with the good god. That is to say, it under- 
valued the historic teaching of Jesus and valued highly 
that of St. Paul and it undervalued the Jewish scriptures 
and religion. It differed from Christianity also, we should 
add, by tending to remain many dissociated free sects 
rather than to become an organized church. Gnosticism 
reached its greatest strength in the first and second cen- 
turies and therefore it was at that time that the Christian 
church was most imperilled by the Gnostic influence. 
Fortunately, however, its influence was in part negative 
causing a movement among the orthodox Christians in 
the opposite direction from that in which it tended. That 
is, the Jewish scriptures were valued all the higher, the 
life and teaching of the historic Jesus were emphasized 
all the more, the Apostolic writings were segregated and 
became canonical and the Apostolic tradition was kept 
authoritative. Finally, the Church became more centrally 
and thoroughly organized and its teaching became con- 
trolled by authority. But the influence of Gnosticism on 
Christianity was also positive and direct. 1 That is, it 
influenced Christianity positively by emphasizing the 
sacramental, the fall, the use of allegorical interpretation, 
the ascetic life and other beliefs and customs prominent in 
later Christianity. 2 

1 This positive influence accounts in part for the marked difference 
to this day between eastern and western Christianity. 

2 In the struggle to become the universal, or Roman religion, 
Christianity had later two other powerful and most important rivals 
in the two Iranian religions, Mithraism and Manichseism. These 
two religions also are quite characteristic of the religious tendencies 
of the age. For a brief account of them read the articles Mithras 
and Manichseism in the Encyclop. Brit., 11th ed. 



i 



THE CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY 231 



The foregoing paragraphs will help us to understand also 
the relation of the Christian thinkers to Neoplatonism. 
This relation is most clearly expressed by saying that the 
two rival philosophies were sisters, the offspring of the 
same parents, the Pythagorean, Platonic and Hellenistic 
philosophies, and that they were both the result of the 
same general intellectual environment. To the Neo- 
platonist the Christian thinker was a man who had spoiled 
Greek philosophy by adding absurdities to it. In the words 
of Porphyry quoted by Harnack, the life of Origen, the 
great Alexandrian Christian thinker of the third century, 
was outwardly "that of a Christian and contrary to law; 
but, as far as his views of things and of God are concerned 
he thought like the Greeks, whose conceptions he overlaid 
with foreign myths." In return, the Christian thinkers 
accused the pagan philosophers of having borrowed their 
most important doctrines and notions from the sacred 
writers of the Church. And the important point for us 
to notice is their mutual recognition of near relation- 
ship. 

Let us consider the common doctrines that make both 
philosophies typical of their age. In the words of Harnack, 
they both set out from the felt need of redemption, they 
both sought to deliver the soul from sensuality and they 
both recognized man's inability without divine aid — with- 
out a revelation — to attain salvation and a sure knowledge 
of the truth. From the fourth century the many common 
elements of the two philosophies played a marked role 
in Christian thinking and really made the two philosophies 
one except on the doctrines of the incarnation, the resur- 
rection of the flesh and the creation of the world in time. 
"If a book does not happen to touch on any of the above- 
mentioned doctrines, it may often be doubtful whether 
the writer is a Christian or a Neoplatonist. In ethical 
precepts, in directions for right living (that is, asceticism), 



232 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

the two systems approximate more and more closely. 
But it was here that Neoplatonism finally celebrated its 
greatest triumph. It indoctrinated the church with all 
its mysticism, its mystic exercises and even its magical 
cultus as taught by Iamblichus. The works of the pseudo- 
Dionysius contain a gnosis in which, by means of the 
teaching of Iamblichus and Proclus, the church's theology 
is turned into a scholastic mysticism with directions on 
matters of practice and ritual. And as these writings were 
attributed to Dionysius, the disciple of the apostles, the 
scholastic mysticism which they unfold was regarded as 
an apostolic, not to say a divine, science. The influence 
exercised by these writings, first on the East, and then — 
after the 9th (or 12th) century — on the West, cannot be 
overestimated." 

For further study read: 

Encycl. Brit., 11th ed., arts. Christianity, Church History, 

and Gnosticism; 
Glover, T. R., Conflict of Religions in the Early Roman 

Empire, 3d ed., 1909; 
Paulsen, F. (Thilly transl.), System of Ethics, 1899, 65-115. 
For more extensive study read: 

Wernle, P., The Beginnings of Christianity, 1903; 

McGiffert, A. C, The Apostolic Age, 1900; 

Harnack, A., The Expansion of Christianity in the First 

Three Centuries, 1904; 
Ramsay, W. M., The Church in the Roman Empire, 1893; 
Dill, S., Roman Society in the Last Century of the Western 

Empire; 
Hatch, E., The Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon 

the Christian Church, 1890 (Hibbert Lectures); 
Pliny the Younger (Firth transl.), Letters (Camelot Series); 
Gwatkin, H. M., Selections from Early Writers Illustrative 

of Church History; 
Glover, T. R., Life and Letters in the Fourth Century, 1902; 
Harnack, A., History of Dogma, 1899; 



- 



THE CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY 233 

Dunning, History of Political Theories, 152-160; 
Cambridge Medieval History, Vol. I, chapters IV, V, VI and 
XVIII. 

3. Augustine. — Ancient Christian philosophy reached 
its final stage in the West in the writings of the great 
thinker St. Augustine, 1 bishop of Hippo in Africa. The 
transcendent God of Neoplatonism is the accepted belief 
of this theologian. "God is an eternal, transcendent 
being, all-powerful, all-good, all- wise; absolute unity, ab- 
solute intelligence, and absolute will; that is, absolute 
spirit. He is absolutely free, but His decisions are as un- 
changeable as His nature; He is absolutely holy and can- 
not will evil. In Him willing and doing are one; what He 
wills is done without the help of any intermediate being 
or logos. In Him are all ideas or forms of things; which 
means that He proceeded rationally in creating the world 
and that everything owes its form to Him." 2 But the 
world is not a mere evolution from God as the Neo- 
platonist teaches. God created the world out of nothing. 
That is, God is not only super-rational he is also super- 
natural. Though the world depends upon him for its 

1 Fl. c. 400. He was at one time a Manichsean from whose dualism 
he was converted to Neoplatonism. Finally, he was converted to 
Christianity through the preaching of Ambrose, bishop of Milan. 
The influence of the earlier philosophical beliefs of Augustine remain 
evident in his thought throughout his later writings. Augustine was 
both a general philosopher and a Christian philosopher; and the two 
philosophies are far from being in harmony. In this section we are 
studying him solely as the latter, that is, as the thinker who gave the 
medieval western church her greatest treatises on dogma and who 
has been to this day the most influential theologian in the West. 
As a general philosopher Augustine was virtually without influence 
until modern days when what Windelband happily calls his meta- 
physics of inner experience, plays an important part in the struggle 
against both Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism and leads on to a 
doctrine known in modern philosophy by the name, idealism. 

2 Thilly, History of Philosophy, p. 149. 



234 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

existence and though its continued existence is a continu- 
ous creation, God and nature are absolutely distinct. 
Again the very process of creation itself is above both 
reason and nature. Creation is not an event in time or 
space but logically prior to both; for both time and space 
are themselves creatures of God. Here, however, ortho- 
doxy compels Augustine to add, the world is not eternal 
but had a beginning as have all its particular objects. 1 
Finally, God created not of necessity but out of love. 
Creation was an act of free will. 

Against Manichseism, or the Persian belief in the two 
ultimate principles good and evil, spirit and matter, 
Augustine taught that God created matter. All is from 
God. But whence then came evil? If the world is entirely 
from God it must be perfect and good. The answer is 
characteristic of the late Greek philosophy. Evil is neces- 
sary to the perfection of the world, as the shadows are 
necessary to the beauty of the painting, statue or land- 
scape. Moreover, evil is not a distinct stuff over and above 
the good, for evil is a mere absence of the good as the 
shadow is the mere absence of light. It is an absence of 
being, or form in that which might have had being. Even 
so, is not God the source of this shortcoming? Augustine 
replies : No. The source is the free will of God's creatures. 
He gave them free wills and in so doing made them of a 
higher nature than they would have been as mere passive 
agents of His will. With their free wills they could either 
turn toward God or turn from Him. Evil has come from 
the fact that they have chosen to turn away from Him 
and from the fact that in so doing they lost Him and there- 
fore have lost the good. In short, man's free will is the 

1 But as time is itself created, this beginning of the world must 
be a merely logical and not a temporal beginning. A temporal be- 
ginning of the world was and has remained an embarrassing dogma 
of the Church to the Christian philosophers. 



THE CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY 235 

r 

source of man's imperfection, but man was capable of 
being perfect. Man, not God, is responsible; and he is so, 
even if God foresaw that free man would sin. 

Man has fallen, and with man's fall evil has entered the 
world. Notice, man has fallen, not men. 1 In Adam all 
men sinned. In short, Adam's sin was not a mere event 
in the life of one man but was a cosmical revolution, a 
world rebelling against its creator. With the fall man was 
lost. Here another essential doctrine of Pauline Chris- 
tianity is philosophically founded. Man is lost and through 
no power of man can man be saved. Left to himself man 
can but sin, for his true freedom has gone. God alone 
can save man by His grace. Man must be redeemed and 
God alone can redeem him. As we have seen, this was an 
age that had lost confidence in what man's efforts can do. 
His case is hopeless unless help come to him from beyond 
the world. But how is this help to come? Are all men to 
be saved and is the world to be restored to its original 
perfection? Evidently, the hard facts of life prove that 
this is not so. The world is evil and is lost; men are evil 
still hundreds of years after the Christ has come. Such 
is not God's salvation. Rather God saves not man but 
men. He chooses whom he shall save and whom He 
shall leave to their sin. But is not salvation free to all to 
choose or not to choose? No; man cannot even choose to 
be saved, for man is hopelessly corrupt. If he is saved, 
God does all. The agent by which this salvation is con- 
summated is the grace of God working through the Church 
and her sacraments. Without the church there is no 

1 That the fall is the fall of each man was the doctrine of the Pela- 
gian heresy against which Augustine fought for years. Indeed it was 
essential to the Church's doctrine of redemption that mankind as a 
whole should be fallen and that, for example, the future man should 
be saved through Christ's sacrifice as well as the sinful men of the 
past. 



236 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

means of salvation. Thus the church is conceived not as 
a society within the world but as a wonderful cosmical 
entity coming from God and supreme over the destiny of 
man. It is thus superior to the state and to all other 
human institutions and enterprises. It is the City of God 
descended from heaven. The church and the angels 
constitute the great intermediary between the ultimate 
God and the cosmos; and they thus correspond to the 
intermediary powers and stages believed in by the whole 
intellectual world of the Greco-Roman period. 

For further study read: 

McCabe, J., Saint Augustine and His Age, 1903; 
Augustine, The City of God [especially Books I, VII, X, 

(IX in the Temple Classics edition) XII (XI), XVIII 

(XIV), XXI-XXII (XVII-XVIII)]; 
Augustine, Confessions; 
Cambridge Medieval History, Vol. I, chapter XX. 

4. Gregory the Great. — We may pass at once from 
Augustine to the great pope Gregory. The further deca- 
dence is marked. "Gregory's mind was less antique, and 
more barbarous and medieval than Augustine's, whose 
doctrine he reproduced with garbling changes of tone and 
emphasis. In the century and a half between the two the 
Roman institutions had broken down, decadence had 
advanced, and the patristic mind had passed from indif- 
ference to the laws of physical phenomena to something 
like sheer barbaric ignorance of the same. Whatever in 
Ambrose, Jerome, or Augustine represented conviction or 
opinion, has in Gregory become mental habit, spontaneity 
of acceptance, matter of course. The miraculous is with 
him a frame of mind ; and the allegorical method of under- 
standing Scripture is no longer intended, not to say wilful, 
as with Augustine, but has become persistent unconscious 
habit. Augustine desired to know God and the Soul, and 



THE CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY 237 

the true Christian doctrine with whatever made for its 
substantiation. He is conscious of closing his mind to 
everything irrelevant to this. Gregory's nature has settled 
itself within this scheme of Christian knowledge which 
Augustine framed. He has no intellectual inclinations 
reaching out beyond. He is not conscious of closing his 
mind to extraneous knowledge. His mental habits and 
temperament are so perfectly adjusted to the confines 
of this circle, that all beyond has ceased to exist for 
him. 

"So with Gregory the patristic limitation of intellectual 
interest, indifference to physical phenomena, and accep- 
tance of the miraculous are no longer merely thoughts and 
opinions consciously entertained; they make part of his 
nature. . . . Gregory represents the patristic mind pass- 
ing into a mere barbarous stage. He delighted in miracles, 
and wrote his famous Dialogues on the Lives and Miracles 
of the Italian Saints to solace the cares of his pontificate. 
The work exhibits a naive acceptance of every kind of 
miracle, and presents the supple medieval devil in all his 
deceitful metamorphoses." * Another feature of the com- 
plete decadence exhibited in Gregory is his doctrine of 
penitence and penance. "Our whole life should be one 
long penitence and penance, and baptism of tears; for our 
first baptism cannot wash out later sins, and cannot be 
repeated." 

5. Conclusion. — Here we have come to the end of 
ancient thought. In Gregory the theologian and in the 
late Neoplatonists the ancient Mediterranean philosophy 
has reached its last stage. An older civilization is dying, 
and her philosophy is the philosophy of despair and of 
fatigue, the philosophy of old age and of death. The 
pride and effort of man and of his intellect have ended in 
defeat. Man can do nothing. His institutions and his 
1 Taylor, Medieval Mind, pp. 98 ff. 



238 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

science, all of his volitional life in history and all of his 
struggle to conquer the world by his skill and to make it 
the ideal earthly city have been vain. Only in another, 
a higher world can man's hopes be realized. This lower 
world is not the stage in which man works out his true 
destiny but is rather the tomb from which man is to be 
rescued. The ideal earthly life of man is to labor to escape 
from the lower world and from the flesh, and to deliver 
his soul by penitence, fasting and prayer and by God's 
grace from its earthly dwelling, the body with its lusts. 
Nothing on earth is fundamentally important except this 
escape. Man's true interests are elsewhere; and the highest 
life he can lead is one devoted to contemplating the world 
beyond this world. The good is not as the old Greeks 
thought wisdom and beauty, but the super-rational vision 
of heaven, the ecstasy of divine intoxication, the mystical 
union with God. 

What a contrast if we compare this age with that of 
Athens in the days of Pericles! What a contrast indeed 
if we compare the philosophy of this age with the thought 
of men, with the energy of men, with the hope of men and 
with the religion of men during the past four centuries in 
our modern world ! For again we shall see the philosophy 
of youth and young manhood. Again we shall see man 
struggling from primitive thought to science. Again we 
shall see the philosophy of the rational life, of enlighten- 
ment, assert itself against the philosophy of mysticism 
and hypnosis. But in saying this let us beware of youth's 
error, for life contains both youth and old age and old age 
has its vision as truly as has youth. As a youth man must 
struggle to know the world and to master the world and 
to make the world the ideal home for his highest life; 
but in old age the world conquers man and man faces the 
defeats and failures of his life and the vast realm of the 
unknown which his science has not yet been able to reveal 



THE CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY 239 

to him. Thus there are two sides to life. There is the 
struggle to conquer and to know; hence, intellectualism 
and the philosophy of the enlightenment: and there is the 
sense of failure and the presence of the unknown; hence 
mysticism and the philosophy of the super-rational. 



! 



PART III 

MODERN PHILOSOPHY 



CHAPTER XIX 

THE ATLANTIC PEEIOD 

1. Introductory.— There have been, as explained in an 
earlier chapter, three major epochs in the history of west- 
ern civilization, the River Period, the Mediterranean 
Period and the Present, or Atlantic Period. The River 
civilization expanded into the Mediterranean civilization 
and continued as a part of the wider culture; and in turn 
the Mediterranean civilization expanded into the Atlantic 
civilization and became a part of this still more extensive 
culture. The age of transition, from the Mediterranean 
period to the Atlantic, lasting from five to ten centuries, 
is usually called the Middle Ages and in contrast to these 
centuries the last five or six centuries are called the Modern 
Age. However, the student of history does well not to 
make many subdivisions and not to make sharp the boun- 
daries between periods. History has too much continuity 
to be divided thus into discrete parts. Indeed, it is proper 
to begin a history of the middle ages back in the fourth 
century in the time of Constantine and in contrast it is 
proper to say that ancient or Mediterranean history con- 
tinued to modern times in parts of the Mediterranean 
basin and the near Orient. Thus the term, the middle 
ages, is decidedly ambiguous and misleading unless the 
student is warned to use it cautiously. It denotes the 
childhood of the Atlantic period, the time during which 
the northern peoples of Europe were invading and settling 
in the western half of the Roman Empire and were break- 
ing down in part the older culture and institutions of the 

243 



244 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

empire and the time during which the modern nations of 
northern, western and southwestern Europe were arising 
out of the political and social confusion resulting from the 
breakdown of the older order. 

The extent of this breakdown was unequal in different 
parts of the western empire, depending upon the degree 
to which these parts had been originally romanized and 
upon the extent to which the invaders destroyed the older 
culture and superseded it with their own customs. The 
most evident instance of this difference in breakdown of 
the old and introduction of the new cultural factors is to 
be seen in the languages of modern Europe. In Italy, 
Spain and France the Latin language was able to triumph 
over the tongues of the invaders and to give these nations 
Romance languages; whereas in Great Britian and Central 
Europe the Germanic languages dominated. However, 
more important than the extent to which language sur- 
vived, was the extent to which the older culture survived 
in the different lands. In Italy the survival was greatest; 
for Italy, in spite of invasion and political upheaval and 
confusion, remained essentially Italian in culture. Italy 
had, it is true, a dark period, a period when the light of 
art, literature and intellectual life was dim; but this period 
was relatively short. Next to Italy in these respects comes 
southern France. Southern France had been thoroughly 
romanized and remained throughout the middle ages in 
close relation to Italy and to Italian culture. Spain and 
northern France come next in this order, and finally Great 
Britain and Central Europe come last. Indeed, what 
Great Britain and Central Europe formerly had of Medi- 
terranean culture was lost and what they afterward ac- 
quired was brought to them through Italy and France. 

2. The development of medieval and modern culture. 
— The darkest days intellectually were the five centuries 
from 500 to 1000. In the eleventh century learning again 



THE ATLANTIC PERIOD 245 

began to advance; and during the two centuries from 1000 
to 1200 western Europe was eagerly studying and master- 
ing what remained accessible of the older Mediterranean 
culture. These seven centuries, especially the four cen- 
turies from the reign of Charles the Great, are ap- 
propriately called the elementary school days of mod- 
ern Europe; for in these days the thinkers of the new age 
studied the culture of the old age with the faith, the sub- 
mission and the docility of childhood. That is to say, a 
barbarous Europe had first to master the higher culture 
of the Mediterranean world before it could even criticise 
that culture, before it could begin to think and to explore 
by itself, and before its own genius could rebel against the 
schoolmaster and his essentially foreign doctrines. The 
wonderful thirteenth century marks a transition in this 
development. The self-confidence and the self-assertion 
of youth appear and, excepting interruptions due to war 
and tumult, continue to increase until modern Europe 
reaches full manhood in the sixteenth and seventeenth 
centuries. That is, the centuries from 1200 to 1600 may 
be appropriately called the youth and adolescence of the 
Atlantic period. In these four centuries Europe masters 
the lessons of her ancient instructors, begins to think for 
herself and to criticise what she has learned, and enters 
upon the most remarkable period of independent discovery 
that man has ever known. The fifteenth, sixteenth and 
seventeenth centuries may be properly called the Age of 
Discovery, not because discovery or even revolutionary 
discovery ceased after 1700 but because these three cen- 
turies witnessed those discoveries which emancipated 
the modern mind from Mediterranean culture and started 
the most wonderful scientific epoch in the history of man. 
From 1500 to our own time and on into the future, how far 
no one can tell, comes the manhood of the Atlantic period, 
the Present Age. There are signs of its shortly (as history 



246 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

counts time) merging into a World Age in which the 
Oriental peoples will play as important a part as the 
Occidental, with what results to the intellectual and 
philosophical development of man, no one can fore- 
tell. 

3. The culture of the Atlantic period contrasted with 
that of the Mediterranean period. — Let us at once con- 
trast the culture of modern Europe with that of the Greco- 
Roman world. Genetically the culture of our modern 
world has two parents, the Mediterranean culture and the 
native northern temperament and customs which, let us 
not forget, are as old in their origin as is the culture of the 
South. Our indebtedness to the Mediterranean culture, 
institutions and religion is enormous; but as no one can 
tell what our civilization would have been without the 
schooling of Greece and Rome, no one can calculate pre- 
cisely the magnitude of this indebtedness, for we should 
include in the sum not only what we have borrowed di- 
rectly from the old world but what we owe to the stimulus 
given to the northern peoples by the higher culture, what 
we owe thus indirectly. From Rome the medieval world 
learned the ideal of a universal society of men as against 
the narrow, provincial or tribal ideal of the barbarian. 
This lesson was taught in three greatest of traditions, the 
Roman Empire, the Roman Church and the Roman Law. 
From Greece, partly through Rome and her church, and 
in part directly, the medieval world learned her first and 
elementary lessons in art, in science and in philosophi- 
cal reflection. And from Rome she received her ele- 
mentary lessons in jurisprudence. More in detail, modern 
astronomy, mathematics, physics, biology, medicine, his- 
tory and legal science, modern art, architecture, literature 
and religion genuinely continue the culture of the ancient 
world, even though the changes here and there have been 
vast and radical, and even though the temperament and 



THE ATLANTIC PERIOD 247 

the philosophy behind the development have been funda- 
mentally different. 

But what do we moderns owe to our other parent, our 
northern ancestor? Surely something, if for no other reason, 
because the Mediterranean never ceased to be a foreign 
culture and therefore never could become completely 
dominant. Perhaps we may see the debt clearest in its 
medieval phenomena, in feudalism and chivalry, in the 
minnesinger, in the saga and in the romantic devotion 
and love of the saint, in the Gothic cathedral, in a certain 
romantic lawlessness and intolerance manifested toward 
restraint, order and system, and in love of wandering, 
adventure and daring. The northerner is not hard-headed, 
is not fundamentally intellectual, is not a lover of order and 
form, is not " classic." Rather he is sentimental, romantic, 
venturesome, restless, undisciplined and disorderly. He 
loves nature and nature folk on sea and land. He loves 
mystery and the boundless world. A crusader or a knight 
of the Holy Grail, a Norse pirate, a priest devoting his 
life to the care of the lepers on a lonely island, a St. Eliza- 
beth distributing bread to the poor, and a Rousseau seem 
closer and more of kin to him than do Pericles and Socrates, 
Sophocles and Plutarch, or any other great Greek or Ro- 
man. 

Of course, this is in part and of necessity an exaggera- 
tion. On the one hand, the Greeks also had their love of 
mystery and adventure, they too could be sentimental 
and they too loved nature. On the other hand, north- 
erners have their astronomers and pure mathematicians, 
their periods of classic art and literature and they have 
hard-headed naturalistic philosophers. Great civilizations 
are infinitely complex; and it is probably impossible to 
point out an element, or feature in one that cannot be 
paralleled by a like element, or feature in the others. Still, 
though the differences may be reducible to averages and 



248 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

to proportions, the differences are none the less marked. 
Compare the Parthenon with a Gothic cathedral, compare 
a drama of Sophocles with a drama of Shakespeare, com- 
pare a Greek lyric with a modern, compare a Stoic with 
an intellectual modern Christian, compare the Apology, 
Phsedo and Symposium with a Kempis' Imitation of 
Christ, Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, Newman's Apologia 
or Rousseau's Confessions, or compare Pericles' funeral 
oration with what we should expect to hear said on a 
similar occasion. To do so is certainly to apprehend a 
marked difference. 

4. Ancient philosophy contrasted with modern philos- 
ophy. — In particular we must compare ancient philos- 
ophy with modern. The basic differences are two. First, 
the ancient lived in a closed, finite universe with the earth 
at the center surrounded by the heavenly world of the 
stars and of God. The modern lives in an infinite, or 
boundless universe with its countless starry worlds of 
which the solar system is but one and that astronomically 
insignificant. The ancient lived in a world whose form and 
order seemed constant, eternal and divine. The modern 
lives in a world whose forms and orders seem fleeting, 
accidental and but mere samples of the infinite possibilities 
of which nature is capable. The ancient's world was 
relatively simple, the modern's world is infinitely complex. 
Second, the ancient philosopher, at least when he was not 
a skeptic, had full confidence in pure thought; and there- 
fore the fulfillment of the work of science seemed to him 
not distant. The modern philosopher that is genuinely 
modern, is an experimentalist and has little confidence or 
interest in pure thought. He feels his way and does not 
expect to reach any permanent goal. He values facts and 
distrusts theories, for he outgrows theories almost as 
quickly as a youngster outgrows his clothes. He is not a 
skeptic, far from that, for his triumphs have been too 



THE ATLANTIC PERIOD 249 

numerous. Rather his confidence in research is complete. 
But thinking divorced from experimental verification seems 
either untrustworthy or unprofitable. System and gen- 
eralization he has to have or his facts would overwhelm 
him by their very number and confuse him by their vari- 
ety; but system and generalization are ever changing and 
growing and this he both expects and welcomes. In the 
words of Professor Dewey, the modern thinker lives "in 
a universe with the lid off." In such a universe the intel- 
lectual Greek would have felt confused and troubled, but 
the modern thinker feels not only comfortable but enthusi- 
astic. It is all a grand adventure into the realms of mys- 
tery. The modern thinker is confident that he is making 
excellent progress but he does not know and often does 
not much care, whither. Greek philosophy offered man 
a conception of the world and a view of life. Modern 
philosophy offers neither, but in their place presents us 
with the experimental method and the facts of evolution. 
This again is of course an exaggeration. On the one 
hand, philosophies of the world and of fife are numerous 
in modern days and many thoughtful men accept them 
with confidence. Many thinkers too have written "final 
books" and have offered the "last word;" and pure 
thinkers in logic, mathematics and mathematical physics 
have given us immortal treatises. On the other hand, 
experimental science existed among the Greeks, as we have 
seen, and many Greeks were mystics. Still, the foregoing 
contrast is justified. The Greeks were logicians, intel- 
lectualists and rationalistic philosophers; the moderns are 
experimentalists, pragmatists, sentimentalists and roman- 
ticists. 



CHAPTER XX 

MEDIEVAL THOUGHT 

1. The medieval mind. — In this chapter we are to 
study the chief features of European thought from the 
fifth century to the fifteenth, that is, during the period 
called the middle ages. The preceding chapter has pointed 
out that during this time modern Europe is at elementary 
school and is therefore learning uncritically rather than 
investigating experimentally and thinking independently. 
In the earlier part of the period the pupil is utterly docile 
and humbly and obediently studies the fragmentary and 
decadent wisdom transmitted to him from the older cul- 
ture by compilers of text-books. 1 The pupil's own writings 
are correspondingly childlike. These writings are at the 
best mere compilations in which he selects or interprets 
what his ignorant mind can discover in writings he does 
not truly appreciate and understand. They exhibit an 

1 Prominent among these text-books and other writings were Boe- 
thius' translation of Porphyry's Introduction to Aristotle's Catego- 
ries, and of parts of the Aristotelian Organon; also Boethius' 
commentaries; Marcianus Capella's encyclopedia of the sciences; 
Cassiodorus' De artibus ac disciplinis liberalium litterarum; Isidore of 
Seville's Etymologies. Later Erigena's translation of Dionysius the 
Areopagite (the pseudo-Dionysius), a late Christian Neoplatonist. 
Besides these later writings there were especially available Plato's 
Timseus, parts of Cicero's writings, parts of those of Augustine and 
other western Church fathers, especially Ambrose, Jerome and Hil- 
ary. In general it is to be said that it is easy to exaggerate the lack 
in the middle ages of ancient Roman writings and those of the great 
western fathers. The knowledge of the Greek authors, however, 
was extremely meagre. 

250 



MEDIEVAL THOUGHT 251 

immense amount of merely verbal association and dispute 
with little sense of what is truly important and with little 
disposition to appeal to facts and reality for verification. 
Indeed, almost everything belonging to the intellectual 
world is settled and so suggests that it be learned and not 
investigated. 

The two causes of this extreme docility are evident. 
In the first place, the communities where the older culture 
persisted were decadent and therefore conservative, look- 
ing back to the greater glory and wisdom of the past as 
supremely precious and excellent. In the second place, 
the new peoples were barbarians coming in contact 
with a culture that though decadent still transcended 
their culture and filled them with the same wonder 
and feeling of hopeless inferiority exhibited to-day 
by ignorant barbaric peoples in the presence of Euro- 
peans. 

If we turn our attention from the mere ignorance and 
docility of Europe in these centuries to the more positive 
traits, two characteristics stand in relief . If the Mediter- 
ranean world back even in the fourth century was becom- 
ing barbaric again, western and northern Europe was 
decidedly barbaric in the succeeding centuries of political 
and social confusion. In short, Europe became again 
pre-scientific in its thought and in many of its customs. 
Men believed in magic and in frequently occurring mira- 
cles and did so as a matter of course. Men were animists 
and believed in a world about them populated with spirits 
and demons, a world in which Satan appearing in many 
shapes could work his mischief among men. It was an 
age in which political, social and religious institutions 
were not sharply distinguished in men's thoughts and 
customs, in which law and religious custom were largely 
interfused, in which men's religious beliefs and traditions 
contained interwoven in them what little scientific knowl- 



252 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

edge they possessed. In short, politics, science and the- 
ology formed one body of knowledge. 

A second positive characteristic stands in relief and is 
historically most important because it exhibits the new 
element that the northern peoples were adding to Euro- 
pean thought while they were acquiring the southern 
culture. That is to say, the new France, England and 
Germany did not become Mediterranean in culture but 
developed a distinctly new culture to which indeed the 
old culture of Greece and Rome contributed but to which 
the northern peoples themselves genuinely contributed. 
This new characteristic was emotional. It is to be seen 
in the energy, the eagerness and the intense enthusiasm 
of the northerners. It is to be seen in their fear and terror 
and in their love and gentleness along with their anger, 
violence and cruelty. As a folk they were passionate and 
sentimental rather than intellectual and self-restrained. 
They could easily be taught to feel with intensity the guilt 
of sin. They could easily learn to fear hell and its terrors. 
They could easily be taught to love Jesus with utmost 
devotion. Romantic love and chivalry were virtually 
native to them, so spontaneously did these traits appear. 
The passionate devotion and religion of the monk and the 
sentimental idealism of the crusader and the personal 
loyalty of the serf or soldier to his lord or leader, and, we 
should add, the cruelty, the violence and the lawlessness 
of feudal society each and all manifested in typical ways 
these underlying northern traits. Such traits had to re- 
sult in time in habits that made the later medieval religion, 
social and political institutions, art and literature radically 
unlike the ancient culture which formed their stimulus 
and pattern. 

2. The three factors at work in medieval thought. — 
From the foregoing statements it follows that there were 
three distinct factors at work in the intellectual life of 



MEDIEVAL THOUGHT 253 

Europe during the middle ages; first, fragments of the 
ancient culture of Greece transmitted to the West through 
Latin writers and the Roman political and legal tradition 
transmitted for the greater, part directly; second, the cath- 
olic church with her institutions, ritual and doctrine; and 
third, the energy, the emotions and the customs of the 
Germanic peoples. The first factor should remind us that 
Greece did not directly influence medieval Europe, but 
that what the new peoples received was the culture of 
Italy, Spain and Gaul. This culture had absorbed Greek 
culture but in absorbing it had transformed it into a Latin 
culture. Moreover, this Latin culture was extremely de- 
cadent. It consisted of Neoplatonic metaphysics, logic, 
and ethics, of decadent compilations of ancient as- 
tronomy, geography, physical science and mathematics, 
of some knowledge of history but an uncritical knowledge 
and in addition of the art of chronology. Again it con- 
sisted of inferior codes of the Roman law, but later through 
southern Italy of the Justinian code; and of course it con- 
sisted of the actual political and legal customs and insti- 
tutions surviving in Italy, Spain and Gaul from earlier 
times. The second factor included in addition to the 
church as a living institution with her clergy, her monks, 
her worship and her traditions a goodly quantity of her 
scriptural and patristic literature. Besides the Bible, 
this consisted of writings interpreting scripture for the 
most part allegorically, and the dogmatic and philosophical 
writings of the great Latin fathers. Here again the 
greater part of the thought was originally Greek, but 
Greek thought only as it had been assimilated and added 
to by the western thinkers. 

Putting the beginning of genuinely medieval thought as 
late as the seventh century or even the Carolingian era 
we may speak of an era of transmission, the immediately 
preceding centuries, when the Roman peoples were still 



254 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

endeavoring to romanize the barbarian invaders. On the 
one hand, were the compilers 1 of ancient wisdom who wrote 
books sufficiently elementary for their decadent days and 
the barbarous times following. On the other hand, were 
the great missionaries 2 to the Teutonic peoples in Gaul, 
England and Rhenish Germany, "who labored to intro- 
duce Christianity, with antique thought incorporated in it, 
and the squalid survival of antique education sheltered 
in its train." In addition there were the monasteries and 
their schools, and the court and cathedral schools. 3 

Here we should recall the great differences in the culture 
with which the invaders were surrounded in the different 
lands. In Italy the invaders never truly outnumbered 
the Italians and were themselves soon made Italians. 
Thus Italy, where the Roman culture was thoroughly 
at home, never ceased to be Roman in spite of the invaders, 
the pestilence and the confusion during the dark centuries 
from the fifth to the eleventh and in spite of the extreme 
decadence of the culture she retained. That is to say, 
the bond with the ancient world was never broken in her 
customs and thought; and when better days came a re- 
viving culture was but the return of that which seemed 
her own naturally. In southern France similar conditions 
obtained, but the ancient was not quite so deeply rooted 
and the barbarians were less easily absorbed. In Spain 
again the ancient held its own tenaciously though here 
conditions were still less favorable and the Latin culture 

1 Such men were Boethius (fl. c. 510), Cassiodorus (fl. c. 520), 
Isidore of Seville (fl. c. 600) and Gregory (fl. c. 580). 

2 Such men as St. Columbanus, St. Gall, St. Augustine of Canter- 
bury, and St. Winifried-Boniface. 

3 The basis of medieval learning was formed by the famous trivium 
(grammar, logic and rhetoric) and quadrivium (music, arithmetic, 
geometry and astronomy) . For the former they depended especially 
upon the translations of Boethius and for the latter upon the com- 
pendia of Marcianus Capella, Cassiodorus and Isidore. 



MEDIEVAL THOUGHT 255 

was still less genuinely native. In northern France the 
influx of barbarian folk was greater than in southern 
France, and this part of ancient Gaul had never been so 
thoroughly romanized as had the South. Therefore the 
ancient survived to a less extent. "The antique was not 
to dominate the French genius; it was not to stem the 
growth of what was, so to speak, Gothic or northern or 
Teutonic. The glass-painting, the sculpture, the archi- 
tecture of northern France were to become their own great 
French selves; and while the literature was to hold to forms 
derived from the antique and the Romanesque, the spirit 
and the contents did not come from Italy." In England 
and Germany the Latin culture came as a distinct foreign 
influence, "which was not to pertain to all men's daily 
living. It was matter for the educated, for the clergy. 
Its vehicle was a formal language, having no connection 
with the vernacular. . . . The Anglo-Saxons and the 
rest in England were to become Englishmen, the Germans 
were to remain Germans; nor was either race ever to be- 
come Latinized, however deeply the educated people of 
these countries might imbibe Latinity, and exercise their 
intellects upon all that was contained in the antique 
metaphysics and natural science, literature and law." 

What is true of the ancient culture is true in turn of 
Christianity. To the south it was a religion at home; 
whereas to the Franks, the Anglo-Saxons and the peoples 
of the Rhine and to the eastward it came as a new and 
strange religion. "And the import of the fact that it was 
introduced to them as an authoritative religion brought 
from afar, did not lessen as Christianity became a forma- 
tive element in their natures." In short, to the Italian 
the older culture and religion seemed merely "a greater 
ancestral self," whereas to the northern peoples they 
seemed the sum of all knowledge and the highest point 
of human greatness. "The formulated and ordered Latin 



256 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

Christianity evoked even deeper homage. Well it might, 
since besides the resistless Gospel it held the intelligence 
and the organizing power of Rome. . . . And when this 
Christianity, so mighty in itself and august through the 
prestige of Rome, was presented as under authority, its 
new converts might well be struck with awe. It was such 
awe as this that acknowledged the claims of the Roman 
bishops, and made possible a Roman and Catholic Church 
— the most potent unifying influence of the middle ages." 

Thus under the action of the Latin Christianity of the 
fathers and the ancient culture "the peoples of western 
Europe, from the eighth to the thirteenth century, passed 
through a homogeneous growth, and evolved a spirit dif- 
ferent from that of any other period of history — a spirit 
which stood in awe before its monitors divine and human, 
and deemed that knowledge was to be drawn from the 
storehouse of the past; which seemed to rely on everything 
except its senses; which in the actual looked for the ideal, 
in the concrete saw the symbol, in the earthly Church be- 
held the heavenly, and in fleshly joys discerned the devil's 
lures; which lived in the unreconciled opposition between 
the lust and vain-glory of earth and the attainment of 
salvation; which felt life's terror and its pitifulness, and 
its eternal hope; around which waved concrete infinitudes, 
and over which flamed the terror of darkness and the 
Judgment Day." 1 

The ancient culture and the religion of the church were 
to be gradually assimilated and to be recast by the medi- 
eval peoples, and in addition to this were to be emotion- 
ally transformed and were to have new emotional elements 
introduced into them. The result was medieval art, archi- 
tecture, literature and piety, different from anything 
history had ever witnessed before and dear ever since 
to the lover of romanticism. 

1 Quotations from Taylor, The Medieval Mind, chap. I. 



MEDIEVAL THOUGHT 257 

Far further study read: 

Taylor, H. 0., The Medieval Mind, 2d ed., 1914, chapters 
I-VI; 

Harnack, A. (transl. Kellett and Marseille), Monasticism, 
1910; 

Monroe, P., Textbook in the History of Education, 221-350; 

Poole, R. L., Illustrations of Medieval Thought; 

Henderson, E. F., Select Documents of the Middle Ages, 
1910; 

Thatcher and McNeal, Source Book for Medieval History, 
1905; 

Robinson, J. H., Readings in European History, Vol. I; 

Paulsen, System of Ethics, 116-125. 
For more extensive study read: 

Rashdall, H., Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, 
1895; 

West, A. F., Alcuin and The Rise of Christian Schools, 1892; 

Taylor, H. O., The Medieval Mind; 

Adams, G. B., Civilization during the Middle Ages, 1899; 

Maitland, S. R., The Dark Ages, 1890; 

Montalembert, C. F., The Monks of the West, 1896; 

Taylor, H. O., Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages, 1901; 

Life of St. Columban, in Translations and Reprints (Uni- 
versity of Pennsylvania), Vol. II, no. 7. 

3. The course through which medieval thought de- 
veloped. — We may properly divide the medieval period 
into two subordinate periods, the period to 1100 and the 
period following. During the centuries preceding the elev- 
enth the medieval mind was acquiring the decadent cul- 
ture transmitted to it and doing so in a manner that was 
thoroughly elementary. It studied the patristic theology; 
it studied the ancient logic and rhetoric, the ancient 
philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, and other natural 
sciences; it studied the Roman law; and it read some Ro- 
man literature. Within each of these fields of study the 
learner gradually widened the extent of his acquaintance 



258 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

and the breadth and depth of his interest. What he 
learned, he " labored to restate or to expound." But at 
first, that is, before and during the Carolingian period, 
this restatement was little more than "a mere shuffling 
of the matter" studied. Indeed, "the typical works of 
the eighth and ninth centuries were commentaries upon 
Scripture, consisting of excerpts from the Fathers." The 
tenth century shows improvement at least to the extent 
that the restatement is becoming more systematic. With 
the eleventh century, however, a marked change has come, 
the elementary lessons are proving to have been mastered. 
This advance Taylor summarizes thus: " Through the tenth 
and eleventh centuries, one finds no great advance in the 
systematic restatement of Christian doctrine. Never- 
theless, two hundred years of devotion have been put upon 
it; and statements of parts of it occur, showing that the 
eleventh century has made progress over the ninth in its 
thoughtful and vital appropriation of Latin Christianity. 
A man like German Othloh has thought for himself within 
its lines; Anselm of Canterbury has set forth pieces of it 
with a depth of reflection and intimacy of understanding 
which make his works creative; Peter Damiani through 
intensity of feeling has become the embodiment of Chris- 
tian asceticism and the grace of Christian tears; and 
Hildebrand has established the medieval papal church. 
Of a truth, the medieval man was adjusting himself, and 
reaching his understanding of what the past had given 
him." 

With the twelfth century a marked advance in all 
departments of thought and culture are evident. In 
this century are to be found men widely read in the classi- 
cal Latin authors and genuinely appreciative of their 
literary art and excellence. For example, John of Salis- 
bury (fl. c. 1150) seems to have read and appreciated 
Terence, Virgil and Ovid, Horace, Juvenal, Lucan, Persius 



MEDIEVAL THOUGHT 259 

and Statius, Cicero, Seneca and Quintillian. In Italy 
the study of the Roman law has reached a stage when the 
digest is studied with genuine juristic insight, when stu- 
dents by the thousands flock to the law schools of Bologna 
and Padua. In metaphysics and theology the thinkers 
of this century are penetrating deeply into the logical 
foundations of the church's faith and are adopting a dis- 
tinctly independent intellectual attitude toward the faith. 
This can be seen in the very form of their writings, the 
commentary is giving place to the booh of sentences as in the 
next century this gives place to the summa. That is to 
say, the thinker was passing from a mere expounder of 
the text of ancient authors to a writer of treatises in which 
he has mastered his sources having genuinely rethought 
them for himself. 

Of all the medieval centuries the thirteenth was the 
most philosophical and scientific. Indeed signs of the 
actual beginning of modern times appear in this century, 
a century to be numbered among the greatest in history. 
The twelfth century had seen an increase in the number 
of ancient writings restored to the students of Europe. 
Among these were especially important works of Aristotle. 
It took several decades to master these difficult books; 
but when, by the middle of the thirteenth century, they 
were mastered, the effect was remarkable. We may ex- 
plain this effect in part thus. Up to these times the 
philosophical teachers of Europe were the late Roman 
eclectic and Neoplatonic writers and the decadent trans- 
mitters of an earlier culture; whereas in Aristotle the medi- 
eval student was brought back directly to the golden age 
of Greek thought. In other words, the twelfth and es- 
pecially the thirteenth centuries were able to get beyond 
the many centuries of decadent Mediterranean philosophy 
and become better acquainted with a very different in- 
tellectual world and were able to acquire something of 



260 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

the broader and more genuinely intellectual interests of 
Greece of the fourth century B. C. The Aristotelian 
philosophy and science take the place of the Neoplatonic 
and patristic as the higher authority. The faith of the 
church is restated and rethought as an Aristotelian phi- 
losophy; and Aristotle becomes and has remained ever 
since in the Roman Church the praecursor Christi. The 
religious and theological interest is broadening into the 
entire range of Greek science, and thinkers are beginning 
to talk of experimenting and of observing nature. Indeed, 
like children they are beginning to experiment and investi- 
gate, that is, their research is half magic; but let us not 
forget that the astrology and the alchemy of these days 
are the direct and immediate ancestors of modern astron- 
omy, physics and chemistry. 

The last stage of medieval philosophical thought also 
begins in the thirteenth century. It comes as the rival of 
Aristotelianism and prophesies the coming struggle be- 
tween the Aristotelians and the founders of modern science. 
It reacts against the entire endeavor to philosophize 
Christianity, an endeavor that, as we have seen, began 
in the third century and reached its fulfillment in two dis- 
tinct Christian philosophies: — first, the Neoplatonic 
Christian philosophy of Augustine and the Neoplatonic 
schoolmen before 1200; and second, the Aristotelian Chris- 
tian philosophy of the thirteenth century, the philosophy 
of Thomas Aquinas. Against this entire endeavor to 
philosophize Christianity the new movement in medieval 
thought contends that religion and revelation on the one 
hand, and science on the other hand, are two radically 
distinct matters. It is impossible to prove the church's 
faith and it is impossible to search out and explain the 
great mysteries of creation, sin and redemption. In re- 
ligion we must rest satisfied to believe without understand- 
ing. Moreover, it is impossible to deduce validly a world 



MEDIEVAL THOUGHT 261 

hypothesis out of mere logical principles as philosophers 
from the time of Plato have endeavored to do. Thus 
the entire enterprise of speculative philosophy is in vain, 
it is a mere war of words, empty of any genuine informa- 
tion. The true business of science is to investigate nature, 
to learn regarding the things of the world that form men's 
environment. Science must rise from the dust, it is fatal 
for it to try to soar among the clouds. Thus let religion 
and science each go its way in peace, religion to stir men's 
hearts and to win their wills, science to investigate nature. 1 

The various schools and parties of medieval thought 
survived not only into the following centuries but to our 
own times; for to outgrow the philosophic thought of the 
middle ages has been a long struggle and this struggle is 
by no means ended. However, the beginning of this 
struggle marked the beginning of a new age, the age of 
discovery. What the intellectual world lacked in those 
days was not thought but information; for information, 
not argument could decide the issues that were arising, and 
information alone could enable the European thinker to 
escape from medieval thought. This information began 
to come markedly in the fifteenth century and has contin- 
ued to come uninterruptedly ever since. 

4. The content of medieval philosophic thought. — The 
chief lesson the church had to teach the medieval people 
was her faith and dogmatic theology. To understand 
this body of doctrine required first an elementary training 
in the ancient culture in the form in which that culture 
still survived in the late western Roman Empire. More- 
over, the writings of the church fathers contained far more 
than the scriptural and primitive Christianity, for they 

1 The names to be associated with this movement as those of its 
great leaders in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, are Roger 
Bacon and Duns Scotus and his pupil William of Occam. They all 
come from England, a fact, as we shall see, of great importance. 



262 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

were composed by men that had been trained in the entire 
wisdom of their time. In other words, the supreme sub- 
ject of thought and study in the middle ages was the 
church and her doctrine; and only incidentally and acci- 
dentally were fragments of the ancient culture also in- 
cluded. Therefore we may at once make two general 
statements: first, that the content of philosophic thought 
in the middle ages was the church and her doctrine; and 
second, that as this content slowly expanded so that it 
included besides more and more of the ancient culture and 
more and more of the facts of the world forming man's 
immediate environment, medieval thought passed into 
modern thought. That is to say, though the interests of 
the medieval thinker were at first exclusively theological; 
gradually three other interests arose and became promi- 
nent in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. These in- 
terests were: first, the ancient pagan literature of Rome 
in the days of the republic and the early empire; second, 
the Roman law in the Justinian codification; and, lastly, 
the mind of man and the world that forms the subject of 
study in natural science. 

From these facts two further truths follow immediately 
regarding the content of medieval thought: first, the 
medieval thinker was concerned with a body of settled 
doctrine taught and promulgated with authority and 
backed by the overwhelming power of the church; second, 
the medieval thinker was narrowly limited in the amount 
of information he possessed and therefore in the subject- 
matter of his thought. That is, he was extremely ig- 
norant compared with the scientists of ancient Athens and 
iUexandria and compared especially with the educated 
modern. However, neither fact should hide from us the 
further fact that he was a great thinker though an ignorant 
man, that he was often a man of gigantic inborn intel- 
lectual capacity, at first a victim of his environment but 



MEDIEVAL THOUGHT 263 

in the end a conqueror of the old world and a pioneer of a 

new world. 

(a) Platonic and Aristotelian realism. — The faith of 

the church was virtually settled by the beginning of the 

middle ages and therefore required of her medieval thinkers 

only interpretation and philosophical formulation and 

justification. 1 Even this task of transforming the faith 

into a theology had been begun long before under the 

influence of the same general philosophy exemplified also 

in Neoplatonism and had reached its highest formulation 

in the works of Augustine. Indeed, in the broadest sense 

of the word, Neoplatonism, the Christian philosophy 

was Neoplatonic; and it remained so until the thirteenth 

century when it became Aristotelian. In the meantime, 

however, the early medieval thinkers continued the work 

of philosophizing the Christian tradition, sometimes in 

1 "From century to century may be traced the process of restate- 
ment of patristic Christianity, with the antique material contained 
in it. The Christianity of the fifth century contained an amplitude 
of thought and learning. To the creative work of earlier and chiefly 
eastern men the Latin intellect finally incorporate in Ambrose, 
Jerome, and Augustine had added its further great accomplishment 
and ordering. The sum of dogma was well-nigh made up; the Trin- 
ity was established; Christian learning had reached a compass be- 
yond which it was not to pass for the next thousand years; the doc- 
trines as to the 'sacred mysteries/ as to the functions of the Church 
and its spiritual authority, existed in substance; the principles of 
symbolism and allegory had been set; the great mass of allegorical 
Scriptural interpretations had been devised; the spiritual relation- 
ship of man to God's ordainment, to wit, the part to be played by 
the human will in man's salvation or damnation, had been reasoned 
out; and man's need and love of God, his nothingness apart from the 
Source and King and End of Life, had been uttered in words which 
men still use. Evidently succeeding generations of less illumination 
could not add to this vast intellectual creation; much indeed had to 
be done before they could comprehend and make it theirs, so as to 
use it as an element of their own thinking, or possess it as an inspira- 
tion of passionate, imaginative reverie." (Taylor, Medieval Mind, 
chap. I.) 



264 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

the line pursued by Augustine and sometimes in the line 
of Neoplatonism in the narrow sense. 1 

1 The most prominent among medieval thinkers were the following: 
— Scotus Erigena, from Ireland (ft. c. 850). He was active at the 
court school of Paris. Translated the pseudo-Dionysius. Far trans- 
cended the students of his age in his knowledge of Neoplatonic writers 
and their doctrines. Was himself a pronounced Neoplatonist. An- 
selm of Canterbury [ft. c. 1075). His most celebrated writings are 
the Cur Deus Homo?, the Monologium, and the Proslogium. These 
writings are especially renowned for their proofs of the existence of 
God. Notice the gap of two hundred years between Erigena and 
Anselm, the next equally noted thinker. In the early controversy 
between the realists and the nominalists the famous representative 
of nominalism was Roscellin of Brittany (ft. c. 1090) and the most 
famous opponents of nominalism were besides Anselm, William of 
Champeaux (ft. c. 1110) and Bernard of Chartres (ft. c. 1125). The 
Platonism of these days was based upon Plato's Timseus which was 
interpreted in the light of Neoplatonism. Abelard, of Pallet in the 
county of Nantes (ft. c. 1120). Taught especially at the cathedral 
school of Paris and at the school of St. Genevieve. One of the great- 
est thinkers of the medieval period. Represents the dawn of revolt 
against the supreme intellectual authority of the church. In the 
forementioned controversy he took a middle ground between the 
extremists. His great opponent was Bernard of Clairvaux, the great 
orthodox mystic of the twelfth century (ft. c. 1130). Another con- 
temporary mystic that should be mentioned is Hugo, a monk of St. 
Victor at Paris (ft. c. 1135). Besides the forementioned thinkers two 
others should be named because of their wider interests. Gerbert, 
afterward Pope Sylvester II (ft. c. 980), became interested, through 
Arabian scholars in Spain, in mathematics and physics. John of 
Salisbury {ft. c. 1150) was widely and deeply interested in the pagan 
classical writers of ancient Rome. The reception of Aristotle falls 
in the century 1 150-1250. " It began with the more valuable parts of 
the Organon, hitherto unknown, and proceeded to the metaphysical, 
physical, and ethical books, always accompanied by the introduction 
of the Arabian explanatory writings." "The doctrine of the Domini- 
cans, which has remained until the present time the official doctrine 
of the Roman Church, was created by Albert and Thomas." Albert 
the Great, a Swabian (ft. c. 1235), taught in Cologne and Paris. 
"His writings consist for the most part of paraphrases and commen- 
taries upon Aristotle." Thomas Aquinas, born in lower Italy, (ft. c. 
1265), taught at Naples, Cologne, Paris, Rome and Bologna. His 



MEDIEVAL THOUGHT 265 

The central problem throughout both the Neoplatonic 
and the Aristotelian medieval theology was the issue 
between the realist and the nominalist. Certain philo- 
sophical principles were required to prove that God exists, 
that though three persons He is one God, that all men fell 
in Adam's sin and that all men can be saved through the 
merit of one divine man, that the Church is an entity come 
down from heaven, a reality over and above the men and 
women who are her members, that in the eucharist the 
bread and wine literally become the body and blood of 
Christ and yet remain visibly bread and wine, and finally, 
in addition to other doctrines, that the church's view of 
life is justified, a view of life that is distinctly other-worldly, 
a view of life in which this world is but the threshold of a 
better world, in which the chief business of fife is the 

most noted writings are the Summa Theologice and the Summa 
contra Gentiles. Thomas is the most famous of the Aristotelian 
Schoolmen. "The Augustine Platonic opposition against the sus- 
pected Aristotelianism of the Arabians had as its chief supporters: 
William of Auvergne (fl. c. 1240) and Henry of Ghent (fl. c. 1260). 
"The sharpest opposition to Thomism grew out of the Franciscan 
order." Two men are especially important: Roger Bacon and Duns 
Scotus, Roger Bacon (fl. c. 1250), born in England, educated in Ox- 
ford and Paris. Bacon is famous for his reaction against the whole 
scholastic philosophy and his adolescent enthusiasm for natural 
scientific research. Duns Scotus was perhaps the most important 
medieval thinker (fl. c. 1300). His home was either in Ireland or 
Northumberland. He attacked especially the work of Thomas. 
The greatest leader of the fourteenth century nominalists was Wil- 
liam of Occam, born in England, trained under Duns Scotus (fl. c. 
1330). " He unites in himself all the elements with the help of which 
the new science forced its way out of Scholasticism." Although a 
loyal Churchman he took an active part in his day in the struggle of 
the State against the Church. Among the Arabian philosophers of 
the middle ages the following are the most famous: Avicenna of Bok- 
hara (fl. c. 1020); Averrogs of Cordova (fl. c. 1145); and, among 
the Jewish philosophers, Moses Maimonides of Cordova (fl. c. 1175). 
(This note is based in part upon the list of medieval philosophers 
given by Windelband in his History of Philosophy.) 



266 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

salvation of the soul and the worship and contemplation 
of the heavenly host, a view of life in which the origin, 
the nature and the entire significance of this world is to be 
found in a higher, or supernatural world. To repeat, cer- 
tain philosophical principles were needed to prove these 
several doctrines; and Platonic realism furnished them 
admirably. 

Strange to say, these principles in turn virtually reduce 
to one and that is the relative philosophical importance of 
the individual concrete object and the genus to which that 
object belongs. For example, when we classify the ani- 
mals, the classes seem more important than the individual 
specimen in our museum; and when we subsume the lower 
classes under the higher, these higher classes seem more 
important than the lower. Moreover, we may be prone 
to regard these classes as realities, to think of them as 
existing before the actual origin of the individual animals 
we have classed under them, and finally even to think of 
these logical entities that we have made logically prior 
to the individual, as the cause that has brought the in- 
dividual into existence. That is to say : first, the Platonist 
confused logical existence, with existence in the sense in 
which the King of England and the Atlantic Ocean are 
asserted to exist; second, he confused logical priority in 
classification with pre-existence, that is, he asserted that 
the form, Cat preceded the individual cats, or in general, 
that the order of creation has been from the logically 
higher to the logically lower; third, he confused the logical 
priority in classification with causal origin, that is, he 
asserted that the form, Cat originated the individual cats, 
or in general, that the logically higher world is the creative 
originator of the logically lower world ; and fourth, he con- 
fused the logical system of classes in which the lower 
classes are subsumed under higher and higher classes and 
fewer and fewer classes, the logical hierarchy, with the 



MEDIEVAL THOUGHT 267 

spheres of existence suggested by the geocentric astronomy 
of the Greeks, with the scale of existent entities from earth 
to the heaven and to God beyond. Thus the world seemed 
to him a step ladder with God at the top and the things of 
earth at the bottom and the angels and the church, the 
kingdom of divine grace, in between. Again, the higher 
had to exist to make the existence of the lower possible; 
and therefore the higher was a necessary existent, whereas 
relatively the lower was an accidental existent. Indeed 
the higher had more reality and the lower less. Thus it 
follows that God, the logically supreme being by definition, 
not only exists necessarily but is the most real and perfect 
being. It follows that you and I and all men could fall 
before ever we existed; and it follows that you and I and 
all men could be saved as a race before ever we drew 
breath. It follows that the accidental features of the 
bread and wine are subsidiary to its substance, and that 
this logically prior substance is independent of the acci- 
dents and can change though they do not. It follows that 
the church is a higher order of existent than all things 
earthly and than all the kingdoms of men, that it stands 
between earth and God, that there is no medium between 
the individual and God except the church, the sacraments 
and the spirits and angels, God's higher creatures, that the 
church is not man-made but has descended from heaven 
and has absolute authority over men and holds the keys 
of heaven and hell. Finally, it follows that the significance 
of all things earthly is to be found in terms of things 
above, that the world about us speaks in every part of the 
heavenly world which it dimly reflects, that the world is 
but an allegory telling the story of the divine and higher 
world, that all creation looks upward to God and that 
nothing can be explained except in terms of the heavenly 
system, and that of all orders of existence nature and man's 
earthly enterprise are least important and least interesting 



268 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

and are either important or interesting at all only because 
of their relations to the heavenly or higher world. 

However, a reaction was soon to come against all this 
ancient realism. We can suppress human instincts, but 
they will refuse to die and will surely rebel at first secretly 
but at last openly. Man is an individual and is by instinct 
more interested in this individual than in the whole hier- 
archy of the worlds. The concrete world about him in- 
terests him instinctively, and a world of abstractions 
which interferes with this interest is in time sure to be 
swept away. In the middle ages this rebellion appears in 
philosophic thought as nominalism, that is, as the doctrine 
that the individual concrete object alone is real and that 
the genus is a mere symbol or word. Nominalism was of 
course latent heresy, and as such it was suspected and 
discouraged by the church. Carried out fully in practice 
it meant what Europe has since seen, democracy, in- 
dividualism, worldliness, intellectual freedom, industrialism 
and nationalism. Its spirit can be seen typically in- 
carnate in the English people even in those far away days. 
Thus nominalism was the medieval philosophical reaction 
against Neoplatonism and Aristotelianism and was the 
precursor of the distant storm. It fought Platonic realism 
even in the church's own arena, endeavoring to show that 
doctrine to be a hidden heresy and non-Christian. It as- 
serted that Christianity is not a philosophical science but a 
revelation, is not a matter of intellectual debate, but a faith 
that wins man's heart and will. To prove the existence of 
God is impossible. Platonism is but a disguised pantheism 
which makes the world, from God to the humblest crea- 
ture, a logical necessity and therefore ignores the noblest 
and most characteristic fact of life and of sainthood, the 
will and its struggle to realize its ideals. Let the church 
take her true place in the world. Let her set aside her 
worldly ambitions and return to the " simplicity, purity 






MEDIEVAL THOUGHT 269 

and holiness of the apostolic times." Finally, instead of 
the world being a logical step ladder, it may be but the 
succession of individual entities and events throughout 
eternity each causing its successor. 

Evidently nominalism is but an earlier form of the wide- 
spread modern philosophy called positivism. That is, 
it limits man's intellect to the study of what he can ob- 
serve, the world of concrete individual objects; and it 
warns him not to attempt to go farther into the world's 
secrets, not to attempt to fly with the wings of logic and 
words up into a medium that will not sustain him. It 
teaches him that science is of the dust and that the pseudo- 
science of the clouds is mere words, high-sounding words, 
none the less words utterly void of information. 

A further part of this medieval controversy is the prob- 
lem: Has the intellect or the will the primacy? Though 
this problem is an early form of the psychological problem 
of the relation of man's intellect to his instincts and of the 
place of knowledge in human life, it is also a strictly phil- 
osophical problem. As a philosophical question it asks: 
Is the world one that can be understood, is it, in other 
words, an object that science can explain and analyze 
logically; or does the world ultimately defy both logic and 
science? The Neoplatonist regarded the world as logical; 
but the nominalist tended to regard it as alogical, for the 
world is ultimately like our wills as popularly conceived. 
That is, human conduct defies prediction and explanation, 
[ for the will is free; so also is nature free as the world created 
f by the free act of God's will. His will and His ways are 
past finding out. They are so, not because we are ignorant, 
but because they have no explanation, because they can- 
f not be deduced as can the properties of a triangle, because 
I His will is free and is prior to His intellect. 1 In short, a 

1 This doctrine again is an early stage of a nineteenth-century 
philosophy that is called romanticism. Romanticism teaches that 



270 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

science of creation and of why the world is the sort of 
world it is, is quite impossible. 

A final subsidiary part of the struggle between the real- 
ist and the nominalist was the conflict between their moral 
theories. A Platonic morality is essentially a philosophi- 
cal, or intellectual way of life; and a Neoplatonic morality, 
taking one step further in the same direction, is the freeing 
of the soul from the contamination of the flesh by means 
of the spiritual, religious and contemplative life. That 
is to say, the realistic morality is the centering of life's 
enterprise upon the return of the soul to God, upon free- 
dom from the lower world and upon the contemplation 
of the heavenly world. It is essentially an other-worldly 
philosophy of life and is admirably exemplified for us in 
monasticism and in general in mysticism. In contrast, 
the nominalistic morality is exemplified rather in the earli- 
est Christian tradition, in the life of mutual love and 
service, in the life of good works and of good citizenship, 
in doing one's duty in the ordinary walks of daily life. 
It is essentially of this world and its good deeds spring 
from man's interests in this world. The kingdom of God 
that nominalism seeks to establish is not beyond the 
moon but upon earth. 1 

nature is universally spontaneous and therefore inexplicable genera- 
tion. It is the onward drive of creative forces which we can observe 
and record but never understand. Indeed, it is absurd even to try 
to understand them, for their very nature is to generate spontaneously 
and not to derive logically that which they produce. 

1 Notice that this conflict between realist and nominalist is an 
early stage of the development which was to split western Chris- 
tianity in twain three centuries later. The nominalists were essen- 
tially Protestants and individualists, whereas the realists were the 
defenders of the philosophy that is essential to the Catholic theology 
and that has therefore remained the official philosophy of the Roman 
church. Again notice that the nominalists were chiefly English 
Franciscans and that English philosophy has remained typically 
nominalistic from the thirteenth century to the present time. 



MEDIEVAL THOUGHT 271 

(b) The problem of the seat of authority.— There 
were, we saw, two major aspects to medieval theological 
thought. The first we have considered, namely, the en- 
deavor to philosophize Christianity and the breakdown 
of this endeavor in nominalism. Let us turn to the other 
aspect, the fact that the faith of the church was taught 
to the medieval peoples as resting upon the authority of 
the church and not upon the intellect of the individual 
believer. Before medieval times the early church fathers 
had looked with distrust upon Greek philosophy and upon 
the effort to justify the faith as a philosophy. Not because 
the gospel message had been proved to them, did they 
believe; rather they believed because this message was the 
word of the Lord which was to make the wisdom of this 
world foolishness. As the church grew in power and was 
forced by the very spirit of the age to concern herself 
regarding the orthodoxy of her children, she taught, not 
as one debating with his intellectual peers, but as one 
speaking with authority, as the infallible guardian of a 
revelation committed to her by God Himself to be carried 
to all peoples. When finally the church brought her mes- 
sage to the northern barbarians and they cowered before 
her superior culture and wisdom, neither in her nor in 
them was any tendency to regard that message as one that 
could be questioned by the individual or as a doctrine of 
whose truth his intellect was to be the ultimate judge. In 
short, the ultimate seat of authority was not the individual 
but the church. 

When later the medieval intellect first commenced to 
study and to philosophize, the universal attitude of both 
church and thinker remained the same as at the beginning. 
If Christianity was to be understood it must first be be- 
lieved. The motto remained, credo ut intelligam. How- 
ever, this attitude could not last. As men became more 
and more masters of the traditional knowledge and of the 



272 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

intellectual habits of the thinker; their philosophizing 
became a serious and self-confident undertaking. They 
began to use it to help themselves to believe. In other 
words, they were becoming skeptical, much as they con- 
sciously or unconsciously suppressed their skepticism. 
For example, Anselm, the great thinker of the eleventh 
century and pious archbishop of Canterbury, though he 
never avowed to himself consciously any doubt in the 
church's infallible authority, seems none the less to have 
been genuinely skeptical in temperament. He was the 
author of famous arguments for the existence of God, 
and he seems to have labored long to discover them and 
to have needed them for his own peace of mind. 

In the next century, the suppressed reason asserts itself 
in the voice of one of the greatest of Europe's thinkers, 
Abelard, who teaches that man is not to be required to 
believe on the authority of the church, for man's reason 
has the right to be satisfied. Our motto should be not 
credo ut intelligam but intelligo ut credam. Evidently this 
was a dangerous doctrine and was felt to be such in the 
time of Abelard. It is inherently a declaration of inde- 
pendence, and as the centuries went by it became not the 
motto of one man but the spirit of the intellectual world. 
It foretold the revolt of the modern man from the author- 
ity of his mother, the church; and it showed that her 
children were already reaching adolescence. 

(c) Medieval mysticism. — But the thinkers of me- 
dieval Europe were not all intellectualists, for among 
them were many whose very philosophy was the vanity 
of all philosophy and science. There was the old contro- 
versy between the heart and the head. To the mystic, 
as ever, religion was a matter of personal experience, of 
direct insight and revelation. And the medieval church 
had her mystics to fear fully as much as her intellectual- 
ists; for a doctrine that made the individual religious 



MEDIEVAL THOUGHT 273 

experience authoritative lessened and even undermined, 
no matter how unintentionally, the supremacy of church 
authority. Moreover, the mystics were close to the gen- 
uine medieval spirit and sentiment. In them the true 
medieval emotion could express itself; and it is the fact 
that the religious consciousness of medieval Europe did 
so express itself that has made the devotional literature 
of medieval mysticism an unsurpassed treasure contain- 
ing gems precious beyond price. 

With all these signs that medieval philosophic thought 
was coming to manhood we must bring our brief account 
of medieval philosophy to a close. In these very days of 
the twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth centuries man's 
intellect was achieving other things that indicated even 
more surely that a new era in history had indeed com- 
menced, that natural science was soon to begin as began 
of old the science of the Ionians; but these events belong 
to the rise of the age of discovery. 

For further study read: 

Windelband, W., History of Philosophy, 1901, 263-347; 
Taylor, H. 0., The Medieval Mind, chapters XXXV- 

XLIV; 
St. Anselm (transl. Deane), Proslogium, Monologium, etc., 

Open Court Publ. Co.; 
McCabe, J., Abelard, 1901; 
Vaughan, R. W. B., Life and Labors of St. Thomas of 

Aquin; 
Aquinas (Rickaby transl.), Of God and His Creatures, a 

translation of the Summa contra Gentiles, 1905; 
Vaughan, R. A., Hours with the Mystics; 
Gregory, E. C, Introduction to Christian Mysticism; 
Poole, R. L., Illustrations of Medieval Thought; 
Thomas a Kempis, Imitation of Christ. 
For more extensive reading: 

Rashdall, H., Universities of Europe in the Middle 

Ages; 



274 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

Dante, Comedia and the New Life (transl. C. E. Norton); 
Wulf, M. de, History of Medieval Philosophy, 1909; 
Erdmann, J. E., History of Philosophy, Vol. I, Part II; 
Dunning, W. A., History of Political Theories, Ancient and 
Medieval, 1902. 



CHAPTER XXI 

THE AGE OP DISCOVERY 

1. Introductory. — To call the fourteenth, fifteenth, 
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the age of discovery- 
is convenient, but arbitrary; for it cuts this era short at 
each end. On the one hand, the twelfth and thirteenth 
centuries really began the great era of discovery for they 
witnessed a genuine enlargement of the intellectual hori- 
zon in western Europe. On the other hand, the age of 
discovery has continued uninterrupted from the seven- 
teenth century to the present time, for discoveries phil- 
osophically revolutionary have been witnessed by the 
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and even already by 
the twentieth. Thus we may speak properly of the past 
eight centuries as the Age of Discovery in the broad sense, 
and accordingly of the fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth and 
seventeenth centuries as the Age of Discovery in the nar- 
row sense. This fact that modern intellectual movements 
may be taken in both a broad and a narrow sense has two 
important aspects. First, it is an example of a general 
rule. Second, it requires us to study the history of modern 
thought not in terms of two or three centuries but rather 
in terms of movements that involve many centuries. I 
mean by calling this fact an example of a general rule 
that after a great historical movement starts, it character- 
istically keeps on, though in the meantime other great 
movements have started and have become more promi- 
nent. Thus the age of discovery has really never ceased 
since it began centuries ago, but in the meantime other 

275 



276 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

movements have come, and have taken the place of prom- 
inence. This overlapping of periods in the history of 
thought is somewhat like the succession of strata of dif- 
ferent geological ages in the crust of the earth. That 
is to say, the age of discovery is one of the strata of the in- 
tellectual world of to-day, though we may speak of our 
time in terms of other more prominent strata. Since the 
sixteenth century other strata have been forming and these 
strata too have been built into our intellectual world so 
that the total intellectual structure of our age has within 
it fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth and nine- 
teenth century formations. For example, the fifteenth 
century was famous for its interest in geographical explo- 
ration and discovery, but we have never ceased to be in- 
terested in such explorations even though we have become 
interested in many other things besides. As witness of 
this, recall the recent polar explorations attracting our 
widespread interest. The seventeenth century is distinctly 
naturalistic in its philosophical outlook, and naturalism 
has never since ceased to be a genuine part of our complex 
intellectual life. The nineteenth century witnessed a 
marked revival of romanticism, but romanticism had 
never entirely died since medieval times. The eighteenth 
century with its French revolution is famous for its politi- 
cal doctrines; and though our knowledge of man and of 
the state is far better and though our working hypotheses 
have become evolutionistic, still an immense amount of 
our political thinking remains distinctly of the eighteenth 
century type. Let us then be sure to keep this stratified 
structure of history in mind as we proceed with the present 
and the remaining chapters; for in a genuine sense we now 
commence to study our own time. The meaning of my 
second statement, that the study of the age of discovery 
will take us centuries back as well as centuries forward, 
though the centuries with which we associate the name 



THE AGE OF DISCOVERY 277 

are the fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth, 
will, I hope, become evident as we proceed. 

2. The factors giving rise to the age of discovery. — 
What gave rise to this remarkable period of discovery in 
western Europe? A detailed answer to this question 
would require a vast general historical treatise. However, 
our question calls for only the most prominent and general 
factors. Yet even such factors are numerous. 

If we go back to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries 
as we must, we mark at once the important fact that 
western Europe was then coming in contact with impor- 
tant foreign cultures, the Moorish in Spain and Northern 
Africa and in the Levant the Moorish and the Greek. 
On the one hand, the Moors in Spain and on the other 
hand, the crusaders returning from the Levant, and the 
European travellers, sailors and merchants visiting the 
East were all bringing rapidly new customs, new thoughts, 
new learning and new arts into western Europe. Thus 
Europe's intellectual horizon widened. In particular, new 
interests were created in those parts of ancient Greek 
culture in which the Arabs were most interested and which 
they had preserved. This meant a new interest in as- 
tronomy, in mathematics, in physics and alchemy, in 
medicine and especially in the Aristotelian philosophy and 
science. But in addition the intercourse with Arab and 
Greek meant directly the widening of geographical knowl- 
edge and of the knowledge of the customs and interests of 
foreign peoples. This manifold widening of interest in 
the twelfth and thirteenth centuries was the genuine 
beginning of modern natural and mathematical sci- 
ence. 

A second factor was the increasing interest in and appre- 
ciation of the ancient Latin literature. Heretofore the 
study of this literature had been tolerated only as " a rob- 
bing of the Egyptians by the children of God; " and accord- 



278 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

ingly the ancient writings had received a forced allegorical 
and prophetic interpretation partly to excuse the impious 
interest. This budding interest in the classical writings 
for their own inherent excellence was to keep growing 
until in Italy it blossomed forth into the magnificent re- 
vival of classical learning in the fourteenth and fifteenth 
centuries. Italy was a favorable environment in which 
such an interest might grow. It was so for two reasons. 
First, the old Roman culture seemed to the intellectual 
Italian to be that of his own ancestors and to be his by 
right; and hence there was not only a natural interest but 
a far greater tolerance of such an interest in pagan pursuits. 
Moreover, what we may call the puritanism of medieval 
piety was least noticeable among the Italian peoples. 
Second, Italy's growing commercial intercourse with the 
countries of the Levant from the thirteenth century on 
and the easy means of travel between the Italian peninsula 
and the Levant were bringing the culture of the ancient 
Greeks as preserved in the East, into Italy; and thus by 
the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the Italians had 
added to their intense interest in the Latin classics an equal 
interest in the classics of ancient Greece. 

Still, the most important factor was the birth and growth 
of the spirit of nationalism, included in which are many 
subsidiary factors. Over medieval Europe there hung as 
a cloud the tradition of the Roman Empire and the power 
of the universal church with her centralized organization 
and her traditions. This cloud had to pass away before 
individual freedom of interests and of thought and before 
the spirit of nationalism could thrive. The story of the 
development of the modern nations is long and involved, 
but if it is to be put in a sentence or two, these should 
tell of the growth of economic Europe. The medieval 
community was economically self-sufficient. As towns 
grew trade grew. As trade increased, capital and wealth 



THE AGE OF DISCOVERY 279 

increased. As these grew government and economic in- 
terests developed a partnership. As this partnership 
developed into policies, it consolidated national economic 
interests at home and gave rise to efforts to control markets 
abroad and to protect and to monopolize trade routes. 
The story of this growth includes a major part of the his- 
tory of Europe from the days of Venice and Genoa to our 
own time. Its consequences were momentous not only 
for the development of nationalism as the political policy 
of modern Europe but also for the development of Europe 
intellectually especially in these centuries of discovery. In 
particular, it favored the rebellion against the medieval 
tradition. That is, it favored independent thought and 
radical changes in thought, and it favored the appeal to 
facts and to experiment. But more important perhaps than 
all of this, was the fact that great discoveries were involved 
in the very economic and political development itself. 
This development included the growth of the economic, 
or industrial arts; and it is characteristic that inventions 
in these arts precede the discovery of the principles of 
pure science by which the tools and methods of the arts 
can be explained. For example, we have already seen how 
far the practical arts had advanced in the Mediterranean 
period before any science began. As then the surveying 
of land preceded geometry as a science, and the use of 
fractions preceded the science of fractions; so in modern 
times the experience (that is, the trial and error processes 
of learning) of the artillerists preceded the scientific study 
of the paths of projectiles. In a sentence, modern physical 
science arose out of the practical arts. Again in a sentence, 
modern geography is the child of the crusades and of 
the medieval commerce precisely as ancient geographical 
science was the offspring of Punic and Greek commerce. 
Finally, chemistry, one of the youngest of the sciences, 
was preceded by extensive chemical skill in the factories 



280 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

of Europe, and mineralogy and geology were preceded by 
the arts of mining and metallurgy. 

For further study read: 

Encycl. Brit., 11th ed., art. Roger Bacon; and arts. Astrol- 
ogy and Alchemy; 

Thorndike, L., arts, on Bacon in Pop. Sci. Mo., 1915, and 
Philos. Review, 1914; 

Cambridge Modern History, Vol. I, chapter XV. 
For more extensive study read: 

Roger Bacon Essays, ed. by Little, 1914; 

Hoffding, H., History of Modern Philosophy, 1900, Vol. I, 
3-206; 

Muir, M. M. P., Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of 
Chemistry, 1903. 

3. The course of discovery and the great discoveries: 
(a) " the revival of learning," or the discovery of the 
ancient culture of Greece and Rome. — As we have seen, 
the medieval intellectual man was trained in the Latin 
tradition as contained in the decadent culture of the last 
centuries of the western Empire. He was trained likewise 
in the church's tradition. Though both of these traditions 
contained elements of the culture of Rome and of Greece 
in their golden age, the pupil was viewing the ancient 
culture obscured and distorted as through a rough glass. 
That is to say, if he studied Virgil, he studied this author 
allegorically as a forerunner of Christianity and not as the 
true Virgil. If he studied Plato, he studied that philoso- 
pher as a Neoplatonist and not as the real Plato. In short, 
the true Greece and Rome were unknown and unappre- 
ciated by the typical medieval student of the ancient Latin 
authors; and therefore Europe had to discover the true 
ancient culture, as it were, to dig it up from beneath the 
debris of centuries. The discovery was beginning in the 
twelfth century, as we have seen, in the growing interest 
in pagan literature for its own merits. But the great dis- 



THE AGE OF DISCOVERY 281 

covery came in the fourteenth century in northern Italy 
and came especially through the leadership of Petrarch 
(fi. c: 1345). At first the new interest was confined to the 
study of the books of pagan Rome and only later did it in- 
clude the study of those of ancient Greece. Soon it in- 
cluded also the study of the art of the ancients and the 
desire to discover and preserve the monuments of their 
civilization. The result was that brilliant period of nearly 
two centuries which is usually called the Italian Renas- 
cence. This revival of learning included an astonishing 
mastery of the Latin and Greek languages and of genuine 
literary excellence in Latin writing. It included the birth of 
all that we mean by the term modern classical scholarship, 
the discovery of the lost manuscripts of the ancient writ- 
ings, the editing of the ancient authors, the interpretation 
of their thoughts, the working out of the history of their 
institutions and culture, the discovery and preservation 
of their art and finally the development of a genuine 
appreciation and understanding of the ancient Mediter- 
ranean civilization. This renascence included also the 
marvellous development of Italian literature proper, which 
was to influence literature in France and to be the chief 
stimulus to the literature of Elizabethan England. From 
those days to our own, classical scholarship has progressed 
virtually without interruption; and from those days Greek 
and Roman thought, literature and art have continued 
to influence powerfully modern civilization. 

For further study read: 

Cambridge Modern History, Vol. I, chapters XVI and 

XVII; 
Brandi, K., Das Werden des Renaissance, 1908; 
Creighton, M., History of the Papacy, Vol. VI, Book VI, 

chapters I and II; 
Beard, C, Martin Luther and the Reformation in Germany, 

chapter III; 



282 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

Lindsay, T. M., History of the Reformation, 1906, Vol. I, 
42-78; 

Encycl. Brit., 11th ed., art. Erasmus. 
For more extensive study read: 

Sandys, J. E., History of Classical Scholarship, 1903-08, 
Vol. II, 1-370; 

Robinson and Rolfe, Petrarch, the First Modern Scholar and 
Man of Letters, 2d ed., 1914; 

Loomis, L., Medieval Hellenism, 1906 (Columbia Univer- 
sity Doctor's Dissertation) ; 

Burckhardt, J. C, The Civilization of the Renaissance in 
Italy; 

Whitcomb, M., A Literary Source Book of the Italian Ren- 
aissance; 

Emerton, E., Erasmus, 1899. 

(b) The discovery of Roman law. — Back in the days 
of the eleventh and twelfth centuries Italian students 
began to discover the Roman law as that law obtained in 
the time of the great Roman jurists. The first study pro- 
duced merely glosses, or the expounding of individual words 
in the Justinian text and was limited to the study of the 
Institutes. However, in a relatively short time the Digest 
was included and the glosses developed into genuine ex- 
positions of the law. Soon too a widespread interest in 
the study of the Roman law developed and the great law 
schools of Italy drew thousands of students from all parts 
of western Europe. From Italy jurisprudence spread to 
southern France and to Germany. In Germany especially 
the Roman law was appealed to wherever the local law 
failed specifically to cover the case before the higher 
court; and gradually the legal training which the study 
of the Roman law provided and the wider and wider use 
of the principles of this law in the courts made Roman law 
virtually the common law of the German states. In 
France the influence of the Roman law upon the common 



THE AGE OF DISCOVERY 283 

law of the land was equally great. In England the develop- 
ment of the common law and equity seems at first sight 
to have been quite independent of the study of the great 
Roman jurists; but the influence of such study, though 
more hidden and though more general, was probably 
present. The fact that a great philosophic system of law 
existed and that this system was known and studied by 
the writers of the English text-books and by the students 
of the canon law makes any other inference seem improba- 
ble. 

The details of modern legal development are overwhelm- 
ingly numerous. However, amid them all one fact stands 
out, from the days of the early Italian Renascence to our 
own, the study of the Roman law has been ordinarily a 
part of the training of the modern jurist. 

For further study read: 

Sohm, R. (transl. Ledlie), The Institutes of Roman Law; 
Pollock and Maitland, History of English Law, 2d ed., 1909, 

Introduction; 
Vinogradoff, P., Roman Law in Medieval Europe, 1906; 
Maitland and Montague, A Sketch of English Legal His- 
tory, 1915; 
Jenks, E., A Short History of English Law, 1912; 
Jenks, E., Law and Politics in the Middle Ages, 1898; 
Maitland, F. W., English Law and the Renaissance, 1901; 
Rashdall, Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages. 

(c) The geographical discoveries. — In turning next to 
consider the geographical discoveries which began in the 
days of the crusades and reached their maximum extent 
in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and which have 
continued to our time, we come to one of the most power- 
ful of the factors that revolutionized the thought of Europe. 
The detailed story of geographical exploration during the 
past seven or eight centuries and especially during the 



284 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

middle part of that period does not concern us immedi- 
ately. For our present purpose it suffices to point out the 
major parts of the story of man's becoming acquainted 
with the entire surface of the earth, with the people who 
dwell in all lands, with the customs and thought of savage 
and barbarian, with the flora and fauna of distant lands 
and seas and with the vestiges of extinct life and culture. 
We recall how medieval Europe was becoming acquainted 
with the eastern Mediterranean world, and even with the 
more remote East, Russia, Central Asia and India. The 
crusaders, the missionaries and the merchants of those 
days brought this to pass. In the fifteenth century 
Portugal, still under the spell of the crusader's ideal and 
of the desire to outflank the Arab and no doubt also in 
search of wealth, began to explore the western coast of 
Africa. In a few decades this enterprise led Portuguese 
sailors to the southernmost cape of Africa and beyond 
to the settlements of Arabian colonies on the eastern coast; 
and in 1497 the greatest feat of seamanship ever attempted 
began in the departure of Vasco da Gama from Lisbon for 
India. Then the Mohammedan was completely out- 
flanked; and in a few years the Portuguese admirals with 
their far superior ships and seamanship commanded the 
Indian trade, and the old trade route via the Levant, with 
its costly and difficult methods of transit, had become 
hopelessly inferior to the ocean route. In the meantime 
the search for a direct western route to India, misled by the 
exaggerated estimate of the longitudinal width of the 
Euro-Asian continent obtaining since the days of Ptolemy, 
led to the discovery of America and by 1521 to the cir- 
cumnavigating of the globe. The remainder of the story 
may be omitted, wherein Asia, America and Africa have 
been explored and added to the European world, and 
wherein the Atlantic Ocean has become to the modern 
what the Mediterranean sea was to the ancient world. 



THE AGE OF DISCOVERY 285 

But the effect of these discoveries during the sixteenth 
and seventeenth centuries not only upon the commerce 
and politics of Europe but also upon the intellectual life 
of Europe can hardly be exaggerated. 

Let us then put to ourselves the question : What were the 
most prominent effects of these geographical discoveries 
upon the thought of Europe? (1) There is the bald fact 
that they gave Europe a host of new interests, or subjects 
of thought. This alone implies that the new subjects 
competed successfully with the old and that the old in- 
terests became less prominent. And one of the evident 
facts in medieval thought was the almost exclusive theo- 
logical interest. (2) But these new interests were not mere 
rivals of the old; for they raised numberless new and 
important problems, and they led men to correct numerous 
errors of the older learning. For example, to know the 
customs of other lands makes one critical of the customs of 
one's own land. To know the radically different thoughts 
and morals of other people makes one see that numerous 
principles which before were accepted as self-evident are 
mere assumptions. It was no accident then that the in- 
tellectual men of Europe two centuries after Columbus 
and Vasco da Gama questioned almost every institution, 
custom, religious dogma and moral principle of the medi- 
eval tradition, that they believed men are the mere prod- 
uct of their environment and that therefore environment 
if rightly chosen can make men perfect. It was no accident 
that they thought civilization an artificial structure and 
that the natural man as opposed to the civilized man formed 
the basic man of so many of their political, moral, religious 
and educational theories. (3) Finally, these discoveries 
filled parts of Europe with the very spirit of adventure and 
they made people more tolerant and expectant of change 
in every department of life. Picture the effect of these 
early discovered worlds upon the adventurous members 



286 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

of the European population, an effect comparable to that 
of the discovery of gold in Australia, California and the 
Klondike. Picture the frequency with which extraordi- 
nary news must have been received in the busy seaports of 
western Europe and the growing response to novelty it- 
self as a matter of course. True, these facts do not imply 
that all of Europe became radically minded or that any 
place became radically minded in all things. But they do 
imply that the geographical discoveries alone go far to 
explain the tremendous change that came as a matter of 
fact over the intellectual life of Europe in the course of the 
sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. 

For further study read: 

Cambridge Modern History, Vol. I, 7-36; 

Jacobs, J., The Story of Geographical Discovery, 1902. 
For more extensive study read: 

Marco Polo, Travels, ed. by Yule, 3d ed., 1903; 

Travels of Sir John Mandeville, ed. publ. by Macmillan Co. ; 

Beazley, C. R., The Dawn of Modern Geography, 1897- 
1906. 

(d) The astronomical discoveries. — However, we do 
not depend solely upon geographical discoveries to explain 
the great change in Europe's intellectual life, for other 
discoveries, revolutionary in their effect upon man's 
thought, were soon added. These discoveries belong to the 
field of astronomy, physics and mathematical science, and 
physiology. 

Any astronomical research that can be properly so 
called, had long ceased in the western Roman Empire 
when the middle ages began; and when astronomical re- 
search did begin again the new interest came through the 
Moors. In contrast with the absence of astronomical 
study in the West, there had arisen in the land of the 
Caliphs and under their patronage a remarkable interest in 



THE AGE OF DISCOVERY 287 

astronomy as early as the eighth century. The Almagest 
of Ptolemy was translated and so also were the writings 
of other Greek astronomers. Careful observations were 
made and the observers seriously attempted to verify and 
to correct the results of the Greek astronomers. In ad- 
dition, better instruments were constructed and some 
genuine though minor discoveries were made. From the 
East the study of astronomy was carried to the Moors of 
Spain, and from the Moors the interest in astronomy made 
its way into western Christendom and by the thirteenth 
century its presence was widespread in western Europe. 
In the first two centuries this western study of astronomy 
was limited to collecting and compiling such information 
got from the Greeks and Arabs as the students could them- 
selves master; but in the fifteenth century a dawning in- 
dependence in both study and research appeared; and by 
the year 1500 genuine progress had been made by manu- 
facturing improved instruments, by observing more ac- 
curately and by adding to the older information minor 
discoveries and theories. But at this time and for many 
decades to come astronomy failed to shake off the prescien- 
tific superstitions so long associated with the study of the 
stars. Astronomers themselves remained astrologers and 
allegorists. Indeed, even as late as 1655 Huyghens, one 
of Europe's greatest astronomers and most enlightened 
minds, argued that inasmuch as the number of planets 
and satellites then known had reached the perfect number 
twelve there could be no more to discover! Still, beside 
this remnant of prescience we should put the record that 
the comet of 1472 was seriously observed as an object of 
scientific study and not as an object of superstitious terror. 
With the first quarter of the sixteenth century we come 
to the most important event philosophically in the history 
of astronomy, if not to the most important event in the 
history of philosophy. Long before, the Pythagoreans 



288 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

had suggested that the earth itself may move and later 
Aristarchus had suggested a heliocentric hypothesis; but 
these guesses had fallen on deaf ears, for the Greeks were 
never to outgrow the prescientific geocentric world. Now, 
however, influenced by the increasing complexity and 
difficulty of the traditional hypothesis and influenced by 
reading the ancient suggestions that the earth may move, 
Copernicus raises the hypothesis that "the apparent mo- 
tions of the celestial bodies are to a great extent not real 
motions but are due to the motion of the earth carrying 
the observer with it." 1 That is to say, Copernicus had 
grasped firmly the principle of the relativity of motion and 
by the use of this principle he gave to his contemporaries 
a new scheme of the celestial world. He states this princi- 
ple as follows: — "For all change in position which is seen, 
is due to a motion either of the observer or of the thing 
looked at, or to changes in the position of both, provided 
that these are different. For when things are moved 
equally relatively to the same things, no motion is per- 
ceived, as between the object seen and the observer." 

"It has sometimes been said that Copernicus proved 
what earlier writers had guessed at or suggested. It 
would perhaps be truer to say that he took up certain 
floating ideas, which were extremely vague and had never 
been worked out scientifically, based on them certain 
definite fundamental principles, and from these principles 
developed mathematically an astronomical system which 
he showed to be at least as capable of explaining the ob- 
served celestial motions as any existing variety of the tra- 
ditional Ptolemaic system. The Copernican system, as 
it left the hand of the author, was in fact decidedly superior 
to its rivals as an explanation of ordinary observations, an 
advantage which it owed quite as much to the mathemati- 

1 This and the following quotations are from Berry, A Short 
History of Astronomy, chapter IV. 



THE AGE OF DISCOVERY 289 

cal skill with which it was developed as to its first princi- 
ples; it was in many respects very much simpler; and it 
avoided certain fundamental difficulties of the older sys- 
tem. It was however liable to certain serious objections, 
which were only overcome by fresh evidence which was 
subsequently brought to light. For the predecessors of 
Copernicus there was, apart from variations of minor 
importance, but one scientific system which made any 
serious attempt to account for known facts; for his immedi- 
ate successors there were two, the newer of which would 
to an impartial mind appear on the whole the more satis- 
factory, and the further study of the two systems, with 
a view to the discovery of fresh arguments or fresh obser- 
vations tending to support the one or the other, was im- 
mediately suggested as an inquiry of first-rate impor- 
tance." 

The needs of the Copernican hypothesis as it left the 
hands of its author were two: first, further observations 
which would discover facts crucial to the rival theories; 
second, dynamical discoveries that would explain what 
in those days seemed the absurdities following from the 
new doctrine. In spite of continued progress in observa- 
tion during the next fifty years the Copernican theory had 
to wait that long before it was definitely established as 
the preferable working hypothesis. The man whose 
discoveries wrought this mighty result and who himself 
deserves more than any other to be called the father of 
modern science and philosophy was Galileo Galilei. 

Among Galilei's telescopic discoveries four may be 
mentioned as especially supporting the Copernican hy- 
pothesis. First, was the discovery of four satellites of 
the planet Jupiter and of their revolutions. This fully 
proved that great bodies could revolve about and follow 
another great body though the latter was itself moving 
through space at a high velocity, a doctrine that seemed 



290 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

to the traditional thinker absurd and yet indispensable 
to the new hypothesis. Second, the discovery of the 
phases of Venus made its relation to the sun and its like- 
ness to the moon and earth evident. Third, the discovery 
of the irregular surface of the moon, and fourth, the dis- 
covery of sun spots and through their motion the discovery 
of the probable revolution of the sun itself were fatal 
blows to the ancient belief in the changelessness of the 
heavens and added evidence of the similarity of the ce- 
lestial and the terrestrial worlds. 

Among Galilei's discoveries in dynamics were two of the 
utmost importance in giving modern Europe her cosmol- 
ogy. These were the laws of the acceleration of falling 
bodies and the principle that a moving body will if unim- 
peded move in a straight line with uniform velocity. 
They are themselves very simple and were discovered by 
means of very simple experiments; but they are the basis 
historically of the entire modern astronomy and me- 
chanics, and they are the beginning of the greatest intel- 
lectual revolution man has ever witnessed. 

Though the full account of the development of modern 
astronomy from Galilei to Newton, from Newton to La- 
place and from Laplace to our own day includes numerous 
names and numberless details, it is astonishing how brief 
the story can be made. The discovery by Kepler of the 
paths of the planets and of the law that the line joining 
sun and planet sweeps through equal areas in equal times, 
and the discoveries associated especially with the name of 
Huyghens (resulting from experiments with the pendulum 
and with colliding bodies), these discoveries together with 
better mathematical methods and more accurate and more 
numerous astronomical observations made the astronomy 
of Newton possible. Through Newton Europe received 
the virtually complete basis for gravitational astronomy, 
that is to say, for a dynamical explanation of the observed 



THE AGE OF DISCOVERY 291 

facts of the solar system. All that was essential to begin to 
extend this to the whole sidereal system was the later 
discovery of the revolution of double stars. The gravita- 
tional astronomy raised in the minds of a Kant and a 
Laplace the further problem of the origin of the solar 
system and led them to formulate the Nebular Hypothesis. 
This hypothesis may be largely speculative and only of 
secondary importance to astronomy, but its philosophical 
importance is immense. Thus within two hundred years 
of Galilei men not only could think of the solar world rig- 
orously in terms of dynamics but had a dynamical theory 
even of its origin. To this stupendous achievement of 
the human mind the nineteenth century through the spec- 
troscope has added the further achievement of giving us a 
physics and chemistry of the starry world and an easy 
method of ascertaining a star's approach toward us or 
recession from us and the velocity of this approach or 
recession. 1 

For further study read: 

Berry, Short History of Astronomy, 76-409; 

Hoffding, History of Modern Philosophy, Vol. I, 103-148, 

167-183; 
Galileo, Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences, transl. by 
Crew and Salvio, 1914. 
For more extensive study read: 

Ball, R. S., Great Astronomers, 2d ed., 1907; 
Lodge, O., Pioneers of Science, 1893; 

1 Among the most prominent names of the fathers of our modern 
cosmology, so far as it is astronomical, are the following: — Copernicus 
(fl. c. 1515); Galilei (fl. c. 1605); Kepler (fl. c. 1610); Huyghens (fl. c. 
1670); Newton (fl. c. 1685); Halley (fl. c. 1695); Bradley (fl. c. 1735); 
Kant (fl. c. 1765); Lagrange (fl. c. 1775); Laplace (fl. c. 1790); Wil- 
liam Herschel (fl. c. 1780). With Herschel, the discoverer of the 
motion of double stars, and with the beginning of the nineteenth 
century our brief list must close as the names become too numerous 
and can be got best from a history of astronomy. 



292 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

Whewell, History of the Inductive Sciences; 
Clerke, A. M., Popular History of Astronomy in the Nine- 
teenth Century. 

(e) The mathematical discoveries. — As Greek astron- 
omy was studied by the Arabs x and carried by them to 
the western world, so also was Greek mathematics. In 
transmitting to the West arithmetic, algebra, trigonom- 
etry and geometry the Arabs added little to the informa- 
tion they had received from their teachers, the Greeks; but 
they did thoroughly appreciate and understand the Greek 
mathematicians and so were themselves excellent teachers. 
This transmission took place in the twelfth, thirteenth and 
fourteenth centuries. In the fifteenth century the original 
writings of the Greek mathematicians were coming into 
western Europe directly from Constantinople, so that 
in this century both Greek and Arabic mathematics were 
easily accessible to European students. With the six- 
teenth century modern mathematics began; but this 
beginning may be summed up in the sentence, Greek 
mathematics was merely extended; whereas with the sev- 
enteenth century began that revolutionary development 
of modern mathematics which has brought the science far 
beyond the bounds of the Greek mathematical sciences. 
Most briefly summarized, the following five stages may be 
discerned in the history of modern mathematics since 
1600 : first the invention 2 and development of analytic 
geometry; second, the invention of the calculus; 3 third, the 
development of mechanics as an exact mathematical sci- 

1 The Arabs received mathematical information from the Hindoos 
also, especially the decimal notation of numbers. 

2 Especially associated with Descartes and the date 1637. Cf. Ball, 
A Short History of Mathematics, pp. 232 ff. 

3 Especially associated with Newton and Leibniz and the dates 
1666 and 1674. 



THE AGE OF DISCOVERY 293 

ence; * fourth, the development of mathematical physics; 2 
and fifth, the immense development of pure mathematics 
in the nineteenth century. 3 

For further study read: 

Ball, A Short History of Mathematics, 123-229, and espec. 

230-410; 
Cajori, History of Mathematics, 84-137, and espec. 138- 
403. 
For more extensive study read: 

Mach, E. (transl. McCormack), Science of Mechanics; 
Cantor, M., Vorlesungen iiber die Geschichte der Mathe- 
matik. 

(f) The physical, chemical and physiological discov- 
eries. — From the late sixteenth century to the dawn of 
the nineteenth century was an age also of great discoveries 
in the realms of physical science and of physiological 
science, but especially in the former realm. Even the brief- 
est summary of these numerous discoveries is beyond the 
scope of a paragraph. Suffice it then to say that besides 
dynamics, which, as we have already seen, becomes thor- 

1 Especially associated in its earlier stages with Huyghens and 
Newton and in its completion with Laplace and Lagrange, late in 
the eighteenth century. 

2 Commenced by Huyghens and Newton in their theories of light. 

3 Among the prominent founders of modern mathematics during 
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were the following: — 
Descartes (fl. c. 1635); Cavalieri (fl. c. 1640) who enunciated the 
principles of indivisibles, a forerunner of the integral calculus; Wallis 
(fl. c. 1645) who systematized and extended the methods and re- 
sults of Descartes and Cavalieri; Pascal (fl. c. 1660) and Fermat (fl. c. 
1641) with whose names is especially associated the theory of proba- 
bility; Huyghens (fl. c. 1670); Newton (fl. c. 1685); Leibniz (fl. c. 
1685); D'Alembert (fl. c. 1755) contributed especially to mechanics; 
Euler (fl. c. 1745) revised, systematized and extended analysis; 
Lagrange (fl. c. 1775) contributed to many branches of mathematics, 
especially to the calculus of variations and to mechanics; finally 
Laplace (fl. c. 1790) celestial mechanics and the theory of probability. 



294 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

oughly established as a really complete science before the 
nineteenth century, the following sciences become estab- 
lished at least in their beginnings by the end of the eigh- 
teenth century, the sciences of sound, of optics and light, 
of magnetism and electricity, the science of chemistry and 
the science of physiology. Among the many discoveries 
that may be singled out as having had marked philosophi- 
cal importance the following are a few: the discoveries 
that led to the Newtonian mechanics and gravitational 
astronomy (from Galilei to Newton); the discovery of 
the circulation of the blood and the related discoveries 
of glands and ducts in the mammals leading men to think 
of the living body as a machine (Harvey, 1628); the dis- 
covery of microscopic organisms (Leeuwenhoek, 1683); 
the discovery of the paths travelled by light leading to 
the formulation of the principle of least action (Snell, 
fl. c. 1630; Descartes, JZ. c. 1635, and Fermat, fl. c. 1641); 
the discovery that light travels with finite velocity (Romer, 
fl. c. 1685; Bradley, fl. c. 1730); the discovery of the un- 
dulatory theory of light (Huyghens, Young) ; the discovery 
of the composition of white light (Newton, 1666) ; the dis- 
coveries gradually revealing relations between magnetism 
and electricity (Oersted, 1819) ; the electromagnetic theory 
of light (Faraday, 1845) ; the discoveries in chemistry that 
led toward the entertaining of the principle of the conser- 
vation of mass and of the atomic theory (Dalton, 1803); 
and finally the discoveries that step by step were leading 
men to conceive the notion of energy as an ultimate physi- 
cal entity along with matter and to think of universal 
principles of energy. This goal is truly reached only in the 
nineteenth century in the discovery of the mechanical 
equivalent of heat (Joule, fl. c. 1850) and in the discovery 
of the principles of the conservation and dissipation 
of energy. These discoveries were in general related to the 
advancing knowledge in the science of heat, a science that 



THE AGE OF DISCOVERY 295 

began with Newton but became thoroughly established 
only in the nineteenth century. (Carnot, fl. c. 1835; 
Mayer, fl. c. 1855; Joule, fl. c. 1850; Helmholtz, fl. c. 1860; 
Clausius, fl. c. 1860; Thomson, W., fl. c. 1865; Rankine, 
fl. c. 1860.) 1 

For further study read: 

Whetham, Foundations of Science (The People's Books) ; 

Cajori, F., History of Physics, 1916; 

Thorpe, E., History of Chemistry, 1909, espec. Vol. I; 

Foster, M., Lectures on the History of Physiology, 1901; 

Encycl. Brit., 11th ed., art. Academies. 
For more extensive study read: 

Mach, E., Science of Mechanics; 

Duhem, P., L/Evolution des Theories Physiques, 1896; 

Whewell, History of the Inductive Sciences; 

Ornstein, M., Role of the Scientific Societies in the Seven- 
teenth Century, 1913 (Columbia University Doctor's 
Dissertation) ; 

Dannemann, F., Die Naturwissenschaften in ihrer Ent- 
wicklung; 

Gerland und Traumuller, Geschichte der physikalischen 
Experimentierkunst, 1899; 

Miall, L. C, History of Biology, 1911. 

1 Among the numerous fathers of seventeenth and eighteenth 
century physical science (an acquaintance with whose names and 
work can be got from Cajori's History of Physics and Thorpe's 
History of Chemistry) I would call the attention of the student of 
the history of philosophy especially to the following: Galilei (fl. 
1605); Gilbert (fl. 1580); Snell (fl. 1620, refraction of light); Des- 
cartes (fl. 1635); Torricelli (fl. 1640); Pascal (fl. 1655, pressure of 
liquids) ; Huyghens (fl. 1670, light) ; Boyle (fl. 1670, heat and one of 
the fathers of chemistry); Newton (fl. 1685, astronomy, light and 
heat); Romer (fl. 1685, finite velocity of light); Black (fl. 1770); 
Priestley (fl. 1775) ; Lavoisier (fl. 1785); and Dalton (fl. 1805) (fathers 
of chemistry); du Fay (fl. 1735); Franklin (fl. 1750); Cavendish 
(fl. 1770); Coulomb, Galvani, and Volta (fl. c. 1770) (fathers of 
science of electricity); and Young (fl. 1815, undulatory theory of 
light). 



296 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

(g) Psychology and political and social science. — 
From the sixteenth century human nature, individual and 
social, has been the object of most intense study. This 
study, however, has been slowest in outgrowing the pre- 
conceptions and the prejudices inherited from the middle 
ages, and has only gradually changed from a speculative 
argument into a genuinely inductive or experimental re- 
search. Indeed it had not succeeded in so doing until 
late in the nineteenth century. In the sixteenth, seven- 
teenth and eighteenth centuries, therefore, this field of 
study was far less a field of verified discovery than was the 
field of physical science. Rather it was a field of growing 
insight and enlightenment amid partisanship and inherited 
conceptions. However, it would be grossly misleading 
not to emphasize the vast importance of this speculation 
in the practical and philosophical life of the western world. 
By hard thinking and by a growing insight into the nature 
of man, society and the state theorists themselves outgrew 
and enabled intellectual men to outgrow medieval psychol- 
ogy and political, social and economic theory. In short, 
great thinkers led the thought of Europe through the 
mighty political, economic, social and educational changes 
which the past three centuries have witnessed, through 
the age of absolute and autocratic government and 
education to the days of constitutional monarchy, de- 
mocracy, humanitarian legislation and utilitarian educa- 
tion. 

Long and complex as is the detailed story of the growth 
of these sciences during the seventeenth and eighteenth 
centuries a few major facts stand in relief and are philo- 
sophically most important. The prescientific and religious 
conceptions of man's mind and of human society and po- 
litical institutions were quite outgrown by the great 
thinkers of these two centuries. But the resulting secular 
beliefs were far from well founded. These beliefs were 



THE AGE OF DISCOVERY 297 

still in principle the beliefs of the Greek thinkers. Man's 
mental nature was not really understood and could not be 
until Darwinism revealed the relation of man's mind to 
that of the brutes, until the physiology and the microscopic 
anatomy of the nervous system gave some insight into the 
working of the human mind, and until experimental 
research began in psychology. Before this time psychology 
had to remain a more or less artificial analysis of conscious- 
ness, a system of guesses by clever introspectionists, and 
a series of speculations by enlightened students of human 
life. The most important discoveries made were the role 
played in education by the process called the association 
of ideas, and the enormous extent to which the adult mind 
of man is the product of environment. On the one hand, 
these discoveries favored the growing liberalism, empiri- 
cism, and subjectivism in philosophic thought, as we shall 
see in later chapters. On the other hand, they tended 
to make thoughtful men outgrow the older Greek belief 
in the consensus gentium, in the law of nature and in gen- 
eral in a universal God-given philosophy implanted in 
man's mind at birth. 

During these centuries society continued to be thought 
of as an artificial conventional organization, founded in 
fact or in principle by a contract between its members. 
It continued to be thought of as based logically upon "the 
law of nature," and as essentially a rational enterprise. 
In short, it continued to be conceived in principle as the 
Greek thinkers of old would have conceived it. This had 
to be so, until the modern thinker became an evolutionist, 
until he understood better the instinctive nature of man 
and brute and until through a wider acquaintance with 
fact he won some insight into the real factors at work in 
the origin, development, and transformation of society, 
of governments, of economic customs and institutions, 
and of jurisprudence. And this knowledge really began 



298 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

to come to students of human nature and society only in 
the nineteenth century. 

For further study read: 

Cambridge Modern History, Vol. 1, 198-218; 

Lecky, Rationalism in Europe, chapter V. 
For more extensive study read: 

Dessoir, M. (transl. Fisher), Outlines of the History of 
Psychology, 1912; 

Klemm, O. (transl. Wilm and Pintner), History of Psychol- 
ogy, 1914; 

Dunning, W. A., History of Political Theory from Luther to 
Montesquieu, 1905; 

Sidgwick, H., The Development of European Polity, 1903; 

Gooch, G. P., English Democratic Ideas in the Seventeenth 
Century, 1898; 

Scherger, G. L., The Evolution of Modern Liberty, 1904. 

4. The broadening of the field of discovery and of 
science. — A most important aspect of the development 
of science in the seventeenth *and eighteenth centuries 
is the ever widening and rapidly widening field of man's 
scientific interest. This can be seen by comparing the 
limited field of research in the days of Galilei with the wide 
field of research two centuries later. In the age of Galilei 
anatomy, botany, physiology, psychology and political 
theory were merely beginning, so was chemistry, so were 
dynamics and physics, mathematics and astronomy, that 
is, they were merely beginning as modern sciences. And 
at first the problems which they raised were few and rel- 
atively narrow. Whereas by the end of the two centuries 
many of these sciences had become widely extended and 
well established; and in addition several new sciences had 
commenced as modern sciences, such as mineralogy, 
geology, paleontology, anthropology and economics. 

But extensive as had become the field of science by the 
era of Napoleon it seems narrow indeed when compared 



THE AGE OF DISCOVERY 299 

with the field of science to-day; for this widening of the 
field of science and this enormous multiplication of the 
problems and the departments within the major sciences 
has continued in almost geometrical progression during 
the nineteenth century. With the exception of the mathe- 
matical sciences, we may even say that the other sciences 
had merely their beginning in the seventeenth and eigh- 
teenth centuries. Wonderful as were these centuries they 
but led to a far more wonderful period of rapid scientific 
development, the past one hundred and fifty years. 

5. The conflict of science with prescientific and me- 
dieval belief and custom. — From the days of the six- 
teenth century the new learning, the new discoveries and 
the new theories have often come into bitterest conflict 
with the older beliefs and customs. The new anatomy 
and physiology and the new astronomy were at the be- 
ginning bitterly opposed as heresy. Galilei was condemned 
by the Inquisition and compelled to deny that the earth 
moves. From the days of Galilei the struggle toward a 
frankly scientific conception of all that concerns on the 
one hand cosmology, and on the other hand man's origin, 
his history, his nature, his place in the cosmos, his morality, 
his political and social institutions and his religion has met 
with bitter opposition. One battle after another has been 
won by science over prescience, in period after period, 
until the present time, when we feel that the struggle is 
past. But in so feeling we should not forget that only 
yesterday the Darwinian theory had a bitter struggle to 
win men from older beliefs and that to-day Biblical science 
is still in the midst of a similar struggle. If then we say 
that science has in general won the recognition of her right 
to be, let us not fail to qualify this assertion by the state- 
ment that science has still much work to do to win the 
western world entirely from prescientific belief and cus- 
tom. Yes, there still remains unfinished the task of 



300 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

educating even the intellectual classes to a genuinely and 
completely scientific attitude toward all problems open 
to scientific research. 

For further study read: 

Bury, A History of Freedom of Thought (Home University 
Library) ; 

White, A. D., History of the Warfare of Science with The- 
ology in Christendom; 

Lecky, W. E. H., History of the Rise and Influence of Ra- 
tionalism in Europe; 

Burr, G. L., Witch Persecutions, 1896; 

Schaff, P., The Progress of Religious Freedom as shown in 
the History of Toleration Acts, 1889. 



CHAPTER XXII 

THE MODEKN PHILOSOPHICAL MOVEMENTS 

1. Introductory. — Already in the sixteenth century the 
age of discovery was beginning to witness great philosophi- 
cal changes in the intellectual life of Europe. Common to 
these changes was a revolt against a large part of the 
medieval conception of the world, of the state and of life. 
First, was the revolt against medieval thought and feeling 
and art seen in the revival of classical scholarship. Second, 
was the rise of nationalism and of the doctrine of the 
supremacy of the state over the church. Third, was the 
religious and moral revolt seen in the Protestant rebellion 
against the medieval church and in the effort of the church 
to reform herself from within. Finally, was the revolt 
against medieval science and thought that may be called 
anti-aristotelianism. This last revolt included the reject- 
ing of the ancient astronomy and physics and the rising 
of experimental research and exploration with their spirit 
of self-confidence and independence of authority. 1 

However, we shall do well to begin our account of the 
first great philosophical movement of modern times as that 
movement appears in its full strength in the seventeenth 
century, and thus confine our story of modern philosophi- 
cal development to the past three hundred years. 2 

1 It included also some attempts to find through speculation at 
once a new conception of the world and of life. One of the most 
celebrated of these attempts was the naturalistic pantheism of 
Giordano Bruno (burnt at the stake in Rome by order of the Inquisi- 
tion 1600). 

2 Here a statement previously made, warrants repeating. In our 
study from this point on we begin to present literally the philosophi- 

301 



302 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

For more extensive study read: 

Cambridge Modern History, Vol. II, chapters IV, VII, 

IX-XII, XIX; 
Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, 

Part III; 
Lindsay, T. M., History of the Reformation, 1906; 
Beard, C, The Reformation of the Sixteenth Century in its 

Relation to Modern Thought and Knowledge (Hibbert 

Lectures, 1883). 

2. The survival of prescientific thought. — Before men- 
tioning the first of these modern movements I must stop 
for a moment to point out that which has changed least, 
that which has remained still the basis of our intellectual 
life. In the middle ages European thought and custom, 
were almost entirely prescientific and barbaric and with 
the coming of science and of critical thought this barbarism 
did not immediately disappear nor has it yet completely 
disappeared. Thus to this very day an underlying stratum 
of barbaric and prescientific thought, belief and custom 
remains in many parts of our social, political, religious and 
intellectual life. 1 The preceding chapter has pointed out 

cal thought of to-day; for though one movement has been followed 
by others, the older movement has also remained as a permanent 
force in the combined or resultant movement. Thus it is distinctly 
advisable to present modern philosophy in terms of movements 
instead of periods. Moreover, in so doing we shall not neglect al- 
together the fact that there have been periods, because we shall 
take each movement up in the order in which it began to make itself 
clearly powerful in modern European thought. 

1 Here I refer even to the intellectual classes. The non-intellectual 
majority are of course prescientific in most matters of life. Any 
barbarian can board a railway train and ride on it or can use the 
tools and methods of civilization without understanding a steam 
engine or the principles of mechanics, or without being much wiser 
than his medieval forefathers. Hence the fact that the masses use 
modern tools and go to modern hospitals and graduate from the 
elementary schools does not imply that a revolution has taken place 



THE MODERN PHILOSOPHICAL MOVEMENTS 303 

the intense struggle that modern science has had to wage 
with the group mind and the inertia she has had to over- 
come wherever she has asked the group to change some old 
or primitive belief and custom. And to this fact we may 
add that myth, magic and animism are to this day part 
of the bottom stratum of European thought. For example, 
animism is still widespread in our interpretation of human 
life and thought ; magic is still an important part of popu- 
lar medicine; the criminal is still thought of much as he is 
conceived by the barbarians; the methods and curricula 
of our schools and colleges still presuppose prescientific 
theories of the mind and of its ways of working; ethics and 
religion, even among the intellectual classes, 1 still manifest 
much that is distinctly primitive. All of this is said in no 
spirit of criticism or of impatience but simply as a state- 
ment of important historical and psychological fact. No 
epoch in the most civilized of peoples has failed to exhibit 
a vast substratum of the primitive in their thoughts and 
customs and beliefs; and as far as we can foresee the his- 
tory of human society such a vast primitive substratum 
will continue to be present. 2 Indeed, to explain the mind 

making them intellectually superior to prescientific man. In short, 
an examination of the intellectual attainments, or of the philosophy of 
the average man to-day, would reveal a prescientific man, a pre- 
scientific man not in the arts and tools he uses but for the greater part 
a prescientific man in the comprehension of his environment and of 
himself. 

x The term "intellectual class" is of necessity ambiguous. We 
might arbitrarily define it as that ten per cent of the population 
which is most intellectual and best instructed. If we made it twenty- 
five per cent the barbaric element in modern thought would be vast. 
Even if we made it one per cent the statements made above would 
probably remain true. 

2 My ground for this last assertion is the psychological belief that 
at least seventy-five per cent of the population has not the innate 
intellectual capacities really to acquire a good secondary school 
training in science, at least not by our present methods of instruction. 



304 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

of any modern thinker we have to presuppose instincts 
but little modified by instruction, subconscious traits but 
slightly integrated with the system of thoughtful procedure 
and habits socially and blindly inherited through the 
inert group-mind of the society in which the thinker has 
been reared. Moreover, scientific research never has as 
its field of exploration the universe, or the totality of 
possible objects of study, but makes its way slowly from 
some center of interest to other centers and so but gradu- 
ally lengthens the diameter of its total field of study. 
In the meantime much that remains without the field of 
science is conceived, even by intellectual men, in prescien- 
tific and socially inherited ways. 

Hence in beginning to study the modern philosophical 
movements which during the past three hundred years 
have been forming the philosophical thought of to-day 
and have been indeed causing immense changes in our 
intellectual life, let us not forget this vast substratum to 
our thought, a substratum that has persisted through the 
course of ages and that is in part at least older even than 
the middle ages. This is the first stratum of modern Euro- 
pean thought and on it rest the strata built by the great 
forces and disturbances, the stresses and strains, the 
erosions and deposits that figuratively speaking have 
brought about modern progress. 

For further study read: 

Lecky, Rationalism in Europe; 

White, Warfare of Science with Theology. 

3. The modern philosophical movements. — Two major 
philosophical movements reveal themselves in the develop- 
ment of modern religion and thought; first, the medieval 
romantic or mystic movement which for a few centuries, 
and especially during the seventeenth and eighteenth 
centuries, was in a sort of abeyance but which became 



THE MODERN PHILOSOPHICAL MOVEMENTS 305 

prominent again in the nineteenth century; and second, the 
scientific, classical or intellectualistic movement which had 
become prominent by the close of the sixteenth century 
and which remained most powerful during the seventeenth 
and eighteenth centuries. 

These two movements differ fundamentally. In origin, 
romanticism is medieval, northern and Christian; intel- 
lectualism is classic, Mediterranean and pagan. Emo- 
tionally, romanticism is filled with a sense of man's im- 
perfection and helplessness, with fear and love, with the 
feeling of the need of self-discipline and with a feeling of 
the essential mystery of life. In contrast, intellectualism is 
filled with a confidence in man's perfectibility and power 
of self-help, with a zeal for humanitarianism and for the 
amelioration of human fortune, with little sense of sin and 
with little appreciation of humility and spirituality. 
Intellectually, romanticism has little interest in theory, 
in the exact sciences, in the general and the abstract; 
whereas intellectualism is confident of theory, is rationalis- 
tic, and is optimistic regarding man's ability to explain 
and to understand the world, man and his place in the 
world. Religiously, romanticism is mystic, is filled with 
love, gentleness and humility, is other-worldly and es- 
sentially pessimistic. In contrast, intellectualism is opti- 
mistic, worldly and naturalistic. In politics, romanticism 
is evolutionistic and often reactionary, whereas intellec- 
tualism is revolutionistic, democratic and Utopian. Ro- 
manticism has a deep interest in history and the past, 
whereas intellectualism is interested in the future and is 
forgetful of the past and its own indebtedness to the past. 
In art, romanticism gives expression to its wealth of re- 
ligious emotion, to its love of nature, history, and the 
lowly life of the peasant, to its interest in human love and 
passion, and to its enjoyment of rich sensory experience. 
In contrast, intellectualism is classic, favors order and 



306 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

form and purity of style, is interested in the city and its 
life, and is distinctly non-emotional. 

In philosophical thought intellectualism and romanti- 
cism differ correspondingly. Intellectualism is confident 
of man's power to explain and to understand the world and 
himself, for the world is essentially a world that can be 
understood. It is a naturalistic world, a world that can 
be explained in terms of science. It is a rational world, 
a world whose grounds can be discovered and whose 
modes follow logically from these grounds. In short, it is 
a world that can be logically deduced from principles. 
Again, it is a world of law, or causality. Its laws have 
no exceptions. There can be no miracles, no mysteries 
and no indeterminate factors. Whatever happens has to 
happen and under the same conditions the same thing 
always comes to pass, and these conditions can be dis- 
covered. Finally, to the intellectualist it is a world of 
mathematical and logical necessity. It is not a teleological 
world. It is not governed by outside agents nor is it 
designed for some end. Man and his interests play but an 
infinitesimal part in its infinite history. It is a world for 
hard-headed rational men and not for sentimentalists. 

To the intellectualist man's mind and human society 
are likewise rational and natural. They are fundamentally 
no more mysterious than is the solar system of which they 
are inhabitants. Science can therefore explain both mind 
and society and deduce their nature and states from the 
same principles by means of which other forms of exist- 
ence are explained. The ideal life of man and of society 
is accordingly a worldly life and a rational life. Man's 
interests begin and end here upon earth. His supreme de- 
sire should be to make the most of what a command of 
nature and of himself through science renders possible. 
He should be governed by reason and so should society; 
for society is fundamentally a contract between rational 



THE MODERN PHILOSOPHICAL MOVEMENTS 307 

men who should accordingly live true to that contract and 
secure to each his fundamental rights. In short, the 
great enterprise of man morally, socially and politically 
is the happiness and well-being of each member of so- 
ciety. 

Intellectualism has been essentially optimistic. Its 
note was sounded by Francis Bacon. " He was not himself 
scientifically trained, and in many respects, especially 
owing to his ignorance of mathematics, he radically mis- 
interpreted the methods and ideals of the new science. 
But he prophetically expounded, in speech of magnificent 
power, a new vision of human possibilities upon the earth. 
He taught that knowledge, scientific knowledge, is power. 
In virtue of man's intelligence man has a creative capacity, 
to which no limits can be prescribed, a power of sub- 
ordinating nature, and of taking the destiny which hitherto 
nature has controlled into his own hands. If, as it seemed 
to the archaeologists of that time, the Greeks may be said 
to have created the arts, the moderns, according to Bacon, 
were destined for the still greater task of recasting the 
entire economy of human life. 

"The beginnings of the next step appear in John Locke. 
Bacon's vision had been limited to the material conditions 
of human existence. Locke applied the same free and 
forward-looking analysis to its political and educational 
aspects. And the seed which he sowed, slowly maturing, 
came to sudden flower in what have very fittingly been 
named the Enlightenment philosophies, the philosophies 
of the Encyclopedists and Rousseau. They taught that 
by the radical recasting of social institutions and by the 
development of new and better educational methods, 
human life may be transformed into something very differ- 
ent from, and immeasurably superior to, all that it has 
hitherto been. The future will be related only through 
contrast to the past. As Godwin, an enthusiastic sup- 



308 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

porter of this teaching, declared in his Political Justice: 
'Nothing can be more unreasonable than to argue from 
men as we find them, to men as they may hereafter be 
made.'" 1 

The seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries con- 
stituted the era during which intellectualism was most 
prominent and these centuries witnessed as the greatest 
achievements of intellectualism, on the theoretical side, 
the rise and development of mathematics and mechanics, 
the nebular hypothesis, the associationist psychology and 
the contract theory of society, and, on the practical 
side, the French Revolution and the vast moral, social and 
political influences throughout Europe and America which 
sprang from that tremendous event. The main stages of 
the development of intellectualism appear in Francis 
Bacon, John Locke, the English Deists, Voltaire, the 
French Encyclopedists and Rousseau. It culminated in 
the Enlightenment, in the "Age of Reason." 

"The Enlightenment is well named, and deserves more 
credit than we, who have profited by its labors, and can 
criticise its earlier manifestations, are usually prepared to 
admit. Its influence seems even more fundamental and 
far-reaching than that which has been exercised by the 
evolution theories propounded by Darwin. It is the 
specifically modern standpoint. It is the type and norm 
of every philosophy which seeks to justify the methods and 
doctrines by the future rather than by the past. It is also 
the legitimate offspring of the classical tradition. For it 
expresses, under the' altered conditions of modern fife, and 
in view of the powerful weapon which modern science has 
placed in men's hands, the same free self-assurance that 
inspired the Greeks in the upbuilding of their civilization. 
It expresses the same conviction of the supreme value of 

1 Norman Kemp Smith, The Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and 
the Modern Mind, Hibbert Journal, 1914, 12, 545 f. 



THE MODERN PHILOSOPHICAL MOVEMENTS 309 

intellectual enlightenment as the chief agency of human 
progress." * 

Romanticism, in contrast, has given the modern world a 
markedly different philosophy. Romanticism has sought 
chiefly to accomplish two things, to save the Christian 
religion from atheistic naturalism and to revive the emo- 
tional and spiritual life dominant in the middle ages. On 
the one hand, it has endeavored to outflank naturalism by 
idealism. On the other hand, it has attacked naturalism 
in front by endeavoring to show that the world of expe- 
rience is not the world of science. 

In idealism, romanticism has exalted the part played by 
the mind in experiencing the world. Taking its premises 
from Descartes and ultimately from St. Augustine it 
showed the central position occupied by the mind and 
personality of the thinker and argued that the world is 
mind-made and mind-constituted. That romanticism 
could thus outflank intellectualism was due to an ex- 
tremely weak point in the breastwork of naturalism, its 
dualism of matter and mind, its resulting inability to ex- 
plain the mind naturalistically, and its own tendency to 
adopt the phenomenalism of Democritus. Idealism first 
appeared in the early eighteenth century in the writings of 
Berkeley and received its most famous expression in those 
of Kant, Fichte, Hegel and Schopenhaur. 

But romanticism has made a direct attack upon natural- 
ism. This attack has taken the form of extreme empiricism 
and emotionalism. Science is abstract and general, reality 
is concrete and unique. The entire scheme of science is an 
extreme over-simplification of the wealth, variety, com- 
plexity and essential dynamism of the world. Reality has 
to be experienced, intuited and felt. It cannot be under- 
stood. It can at most be described. The world is neither 

1 Norman Kemp Smith, The Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and 
the Modern Mind, Hibbert Journal, 1914, 12, p. 546. 



310 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

logical nor mechanical, but is a world of quality, intensity, 
spontaneity and life. Reality defies the rigor and the 
fixity of scientific concepts and its manifold contents can- 
not be reduced to mathematical entities. And the proof 
of all this is man's direct experience of nature and of life. 
It is empirical proof and it rejects altogether the principles 
and the conclusions of rationalism. This empiricism was 
already evident in the writings of Berkeley but it came to 
fuller expression in the romanticists of the nineteenth 
century. 

But part of this proof got from experience is the verdict 
of the emotions. Man is not fundamentally rational. 
Rather he is fundamentally will, feeling and instinct. His 
true interest in the world is not science but the moral and 
the spiritual fife. The world is not a puzzle to be solved 
but a cause to be won or a life to be led. This appeal to the 
feelings and sentiments was made first in such religious 
revivals as methodism in England and pietism in Germany. 
Its most famous expression is to be found in Rousseau and 
in the great German thinkers whom he influenced, Kant 
and Fichte and again in the romantic poets and literary 
writers of England, France and Germany in the late 
eighteenth century and the early nineteenth century. 

For further study read: 

Kemp Smith, N., The Middle Ages, the Renaissance and the 

Modern Mind, Hibbert Journal, 1914, 12; 
Paulsen, F., System of Ethics, 126-168, 169-215. 

4. The course of modern philosophical movements and 
the philosophical tendencies of the nineteenth and 
twentieth centuries. — We are now prepared to correlate 
two matters, which correlated are immensely significant 
to the student of modern philosophy. On the one hand, 
intellectualism was reaching its full power already in the 
days of Galilei, Bacon and Descartes and retained this 



THE MODERN PHILOSOPHICAL MOVEMENTS 311 

power until the passing of the French Revolution and 
"the Age of Reason," that is, until the fall of the Na- 
poleonic Empire in the early nineteenth century. On the 
other hand, as has been shown in the preceding chapter, 
modern science began in the days of Galilei but, with the 
exception of mathematics, mechanics and the gravitational 
astronomy, did not really pass beyond its embryonic stages 
until the nineteenth century. Hence the intellectualism of 
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was modern in so far 
as it was based upon the new astronomy and mechanics but for 
the rest it was not modern at all, rather it was Greek. Put more 
precisely, the philosophy of the seventeenth and eighteenth 
centuries was that of Democritus revised in the light of 
the new astronomy and mechanics with much of the 
Stoic moral, social and political philosophy added. In 
short, the Copernican universe, the Newtonian mechanics 
and the resulting philosophy are modern; but with this 
exception the modern world has lacked a philosophy based 
on its own discoveries and its own experience, or at least 
has lacked such a philosophy until the nineteenth century. 
Whether or not the nineteenth century has been witnessing 
the rise of a truly modern philosophy, is a difficult question 
for the historian to answer, not only because he is still too 
near the thought of the past one hundred years but also 
because these hundred years of rapid scientific growth 
seem to be only the beginning of a still vaster growth to 
come. However, if a truly modern philosophy is there to 
be found, it must be sought in the philosophical move- 
ments since the time of Darwin, that is, in the past fifty 
years. I believe that such a modern philosophy is to be 
found in romanticism, in the evolutionistic philosophy, in 
pragmatism and in the new realism. 

But let us return to the time of Galilei and trace briefly 
the course of modern philosophical development: The 
intellectualistic movement of the seventeenth and eight- 






312 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

eenth centuries gave rise first to a naturalistic mechanical 
world-hypothesis and to a distinctly rationalistic method of 
solving the problems of nature, life, mind and society. 1 
Moveover, this older intellectualism contained within it a 
fundamental and unavoidable difficulty inherited from 
the ancient world, its dualism between mind and matter 
and the resulting phenomenalism. This difficulty com- 
menced to make itself evident already in the thought of 
Descartes and John Locke, in the seventeenth century. 
In some of the successors of Locke, it led directly either to 
extreme subjectivism (Berkeley) or to an agnostic phenom- 
enalism (Kant). The English followers of Berkeley trans- 
formed his doctrine into a subjectivistic positivism and 
the German followers of Kant transformed his phenom- 
enalism into a romantic spiritualism, or idealism. Thus 
the dualism of Descartes has had at least three offspring, 
phenomenalism, subjectivistic positivism and idealism. 
The two former have kept closer to the original intellec- 
tualism from which they sprang; whereas the latter has 
been predominantly romantic. 2 

The next movement, largely scientific and intellec- 
tualistic in origin but also in no small measure romantic in 
origin, was the evolutionistic movement. It belongs pre- 
eminently to the nineteenth centurjr. Its most important 
achievements were the rise of historical research and the 
geological and biological theories of evolution. Next to 
the earlier intellectualism it has been one of the most 
powerful factors in modern philosophic thought. 3 

Almost contemporary in origin and development with 
the evolutionistic movement, influencing it and influenced 

1 These tendencies, especially of the seventeenth and eighteenth 
centuries, constitute the subject of chapter XXIII. 

2 These subjectivistic doctrines and their consequences constitute 
the subject of chapter XXIV. 

3 The doctrine of evolution is the subject of chapter XXV. 



THE MODERN PHILOSOPHICAL MOVEMENTS 313 

by it, arose the romantic movement. Romanticism began 
to appear in the eighteenth century but received its fullest 
expression in literature, art, religion, and thought during 
the nineteenth century. 1 

Finally, besides the evolutionistic and romantic move- 
ments further reactions against the older intellectualism 
have arisen. These further movements, while remaining 
themselves intellectualistic, have given expression to a 
deeper insight into the nature and results of modern science 
and have led some thinkers to re-examine and reject the 
very basis of the Greek philosophy and so the basis of the 
seventeenth and eighteenth century intellectualism and its 
subjectivistic consequences. Whether or not these new 
movements will unite with the romantic movement and 
so form a thoroughly modern philosophy remains a ques- 
tion for the future to answer. 2 

Thus the philosophic thought of the present time is 
extremely complex. In it are to be found all the modern 
movements from those of the sixteenth century to move- 
ments that are now in their infancy. However, complex 
as it may be, let us remember that it contains fundamen- 
tally but the two movements, intellectualism and roman- 
ticism. 

1 The romantic movement is the subject of chapter XXVI. 

2 Recent and present philosophical tendencies are the subject of 
chapter XXVII. 



CHAPTER XXIII 

RATIONALISM AND NATURALISM 

1. The problem of method. — At the end of the six- 
teenth century and the beginning of the seventeenth great 
interest arose in the method of winning the new and vast 
information which all intellectual men seemed convinced 
was on the verge of being discovered. As we look back 
upon those days we see that Galilei * was already master 
of the method of research which has proved so fruitful 
in the succeeding centuries, the experimental method. 
This method distrusts traditional belief, mere argument 
and appeal to authority and bids us go to the facts, study 
them and through them verify our hypotheses. 2 But the 
method is far more than an appeal to fact, for it is also 
experimental. It bids us invent or discover an hypothesis 
that will account for the known facts and then deduce from 
our hypothesis further as yet unobserved facts and finally 
verify our hypothesis by ascertaining either through fur- 
ther observation or through experimental enquiry whether 
or not these deduced facts are indeed facts. More- 

1 The same may be said of William Gilbert, the father of the science 
of magnetism. 

2 The same necessity that the searchers after truth observe facts 
and employ experiments was voiced also by the great English thinker, 
Francis Bacon; but Bacon was far less aware of all that is required 
by the experimental method than were Galilei and Gilbert and be- 
sides was not able, as were they, to put the method to use and to 
demonstrate by wonderful success the worth of the method. More- 
over, Bacon quite undervalued the experimental work of these two 
masters of experimental research. 

314 



RATIONALISM AND NATURALISM 315 

over, the method is experimental by being analytical. 
It bids us endeavor to isolate artificially both facts and 
problems or to seek out facts isolated in the world about 
us. By so doing we may greatly simplify the exceeding 
complex intermixture of causes and effects present in the 
ordinary happenings and objects of nature and may be 
enabled to study the individual cause and its specific effect 
or to study the individual effect and its specific cause. 1 

Though experimental enquiry became rapidly in the 
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the tradition of 
European physical science and spread gradually from one 
field of study to another; 2 we must hasten to add that 
this was but the beginning and not the end of a mighty 
movement in science and that most European thinkers 
still held to a radically different philosophy and method. 
Moreover, in those days most thoughtful men believed 
the goal of universal and infallible knowledge to be not 
far distant; and though they fought Aristotelianism they 
were themselves still Aristotelian. Hence under the spell 
of a growing and triumphant mathematics and mathemat- 
ical dynamics they hoped soon to give the world a deduc- 
tive, universal and infallible science. In short, they were 
extreme intellectual optimists. 

Let us consider briefly the essential character of a de- 
ductive, universal and infallible science. If we are to have 
a science that is final, universal and deductive; we must 
first discover all the premises needed; and if we are to 
discover these premises quickly, they must not only be 

1 Of course the experimental method requires also the invention of 
more and more delicate and accurate instruments of research and 
more and more precise and elaborate technique in observing and 
experimenting. 

2 Of course this method is in principle as old as civilization itself 
and especially as old as science; but never before in the history of 
man was it elaborated and deliberately practiced as it has been since 
the days of Galilei. 



316 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

easy to discover but be few in number. Again, if we are 
to have a final, or infallible science, our premises must be 
true; and we must be able to know that they are true. 
Now it was characteristic of even the radical thinkers of 
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to believe that 
these requirements could be easily met and were actually 
being met by them, and therefore to believe that science 
would soon become a distinctly non-experimental pro- 
cedure. The chief reasons for their so believing are easy 
to discover. (1) As compared with the vast amount of 
information possessed by man to-day they were relatively 
speaking extremely ignorant; and the more ignorant 
man is, the simpler is the world to which he responds, 
that is, the simpler the world seems. In short, to them 
the world seemed far simpler than it does to us. (2) They 
were new at experimental research and had not yet had 
time to learn that experimental research usually discovers 
problems faster than it solves problems; in other words, 
that the more we learn the more we discover there is to 
learn. (3) They were making brilliant discoveries in the 
fields of mathematics, celestial mechanics, dynamics, and 
the dynamical aspects of human physiology, or briefly, 
in pure and applied mathematics; and so it was natural 
for them to identify mathematical science with science 
as such. Hence they ascribed to science as such the 
marked characteristics of pure mathematics and mechan- 
ics. Now, at least as they conceived mathematics, these 
marked characteristics were, a few infallible axioms, a few 
postulates, a few definitions and then a rapid and elab- 
orate deduction of the remainder of the science. There- 
fore it is not astonishing that the universe conceived by 
them to be a mathematical machine, completely explicable 
in terms of a relatively few mathematical presuppositions, 
should seem an object which the man of research might 
quickly exhaust experimentally and for which he might 



RATIONALISM AND NATURALISM 317 

quickly discover a universal, infallible and deductive 
science. 

Thus the problem of method became a matter of 
great interest in these centuries and received two conflicting 
solutions. On the one hand, Galilei and, in a lesser degree, 
Bacon were teaching Europe the method of experimental 
enquiry and its marvellous possible achievements. On 
the other hand, the French philosopher and mathematician 
Descartes was telling Europe about a method that is 
mathematical and deductive. And, both parties were 
genuine spokesmen of the progressive scientific spirit 
of their age. 

We have now formulated the most prominent charac- 
teristics of the two methods. Let us next briefly describe 
some important details of the method of Descartes as a 
remarkable example of the deductive method and in 
general of the rationalistic movement. (1) Descartes 
indicates his desire not merely for universal information 
but also for its rapid attainment. Moreover, he expresses 
the hope of attaining it with certainty, or infallibility; 
and he reveals the basis of this hope by telling us that 
he has been deeply impressed with the certainty and final- 
ity of geometry. This certainty of mathematics he easily 
reduces to two facts, the certainty of the premises, or 
axioms and the certainty of deductive inference. But 
whence comes the certainty of the geometrical axiom? 
Descartes answers: Whatever the mind clearly and dis- 
tinctly perceives to be true is certain; or translated into 
the language of mathematics, we get all our axioms by 
intuition of which mathematical intuition is the best 
known instance. 1 As we ordinarily believe, we can see 

1 Of course at the present day we know more regarding mathe- 
matical intuition than did Descartes. We know that it is built up 
by training as is any other intellectual habit and can be extremely 
misleading and erroneous. Moreover, pure mathematics to-day does 



318 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

intuitively that a straight line is the shortest distance 
between two points, or that the whole is equal to the sum 
of its parts. (2) Thus precisely as intuition seemed to Des- 
cartes to furnish the sufficient and necessary conditions 
for geometry, so intuition, he believed, can furnish science 
the requisite premises for deducing the entire nature of 
the universe, or for explaining everything. That is to say, 
man's intuition, or his ability to perceive clearly and dis- 
tinctly, enables him to discover the infallible truths which 
are requisite not only for physical science and mathemat- 
ics but also for morals, politics and religion. (3) These 
intuitions, or at least the capacities upon which they de- 
pend, are inborn and universal among men. They are 
" innate ideas," and so we have innate ideas which enable 
us to deduce mathematics, physics, morality and religion. 
(4) But in the interest of orthodox religion which claims 
to be a revelation from God and therefore to be a doctrine 
that man cannot get through his own intellectual search, 
morality and religion are divided into two departments, 
natural and revealed. Natural morality and natural 
religion can be deduced from man's innate ideas; but of 
course revealed religion and revealed morality come to 
man only through the Church. 1 

This rationalism was no doubt a lineal descendant from 
the scholastic philosophy of the medieval thinkers; and it 
indicated, as I have mentioned, that though experimental 
research had begun in certain limited fields of science it 
had not commenced universally. Further, it indicated 
that the extension of experimentalism as a method was to 
be a gradual and slow process requiring centuries to make 

not assume the certainty of its postulates. In Descartes' time and 
until recent decades, however, the mathematician did so. 

1 The most famous rationalistic philosophers of the seventeenth 
century were: Hobbes (fi. c. 1630); Descartes (fi. c. 1635); Spinoza 
(fi. c. 1670); and Leibniz (fi. c. 1685). 



RATIONALISM AND NATURALISM 319 

its way into all fields of thoughtful study. That is to say, 
rationalism is science based largely on socially inherited, 
or acquired prejudices which we euphemistically call 
axioms and is therefore necessarily present in the early 
stages of any science when the known facts belonging to 
the field of this science are quite inadequate to test thor- 
oughly our theories. It may be called the groping stage 
of a science. Hence until man learned, what has proved 
to be an extremely difficult lesson, that what is possible 
in mathematics may for decades and centuries to come be 
impossible in the complex existential sciences, such as 
physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, and sociology; 
he was disposed to believe optimistically that a little 
thought could make these sciences thoroughly deductive. 
Such being the case, one of the most important matters 
in the history of modern philosophy is the order in which 
the various sciences have become experimental. In gen- 
eral, the physical and chemical sciences and astronomy 
became rapidly experimental, or inductive. Next in order 
have come the sciences, botany, zoology and physiology, 
and geology and mineralogy. Whereas the last sciences 
to reach a genuinely inductive, or experimental stage have 
been the sciences of mind and society. In this transforma- 
tion, the sciences of life, mind, and society have been 
markedly slower than the physical sciences, and the 
sciences of mind and society markedly slower than the 
sciences of life, and finally the sciences of society than the 
science of mind. The physical sciences and the biological 
and geological sciences had clearly reached an experimental 
and inductive stage by the eighteenth and nineteenth 
centuries respectively; whereas the remaining sciences 
have been slowly approaching this stage during the nine- 
teenth century. Evidently this difference in the speed of 
transforming from rationalistic into inductive sciences 
has been due to the difference in complexity of the subject- 



320 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

matter and to the difficulty of isolating the facts under 
study and of verifying the hypotheses entertained. Thus 
for centuries the following sciences or departments within 
science remained rationalistic : — the explanation of known 
geological facts; the theory of the origin of species of ani- 
mals and plants and of the causes of their adaptation to 
environment; for the most part, the science of medicine; 
the theory of the origin and nature of the human mind 
and of its growth; theology and the science of the origin 
and nature of religious belief and custom; the theories 
of the origin and nature of society and of political insti- 
tutions; the study of the origin and nature of economic 
customs and institutions; the science of the origin and 
nature of morals; the science of the origin and develop- 
ment of language; and in general the science of the origin 
and development of civilization. 

The rationalistic theories entertained by seventeenth 
and eighteenth century thinkers in several of these fields 
are interesting and especially important to the student 
of the history of philosophy. But before considering them 
we shall do well to study briefly another aspect of this first 
modern philosophical movement, namely, its naturalism. 

For further study read: 

Hoffding, History of Modern Philosophy, I, 176-178, 193- 
203, 218-222, 301-307, 356-362; 

Windelband, History of Philosophy, 383-399; 

Smith, N., Studies in the Cartesian Philosophy, 1902, 1-47, 
137-146, 160-169; 

Russell, B., A Critical Exposition of the Philosophy of 
Leibniz, 1900, 1-69; 

Galileo (transl. Crew and Salvio), Dialogues Concerning 
Two New Sciences; 

Descartes (transl. Haldane and Ross), Discourse on Method; 
Rules for the Direction of the Mind; Principles of Phi- 
losophy, Part I; 



RATIONALISM AND NATURALISM 321 

Bacon, Advancement of Learning; and Novum Organum, 
Book I. 

2. Naturalism : The universe conceived as a perpetual 
motion machine. — The greatest philosophical revolution 
the intellectual world has ever witnessed resulted from the 
astronomical, dynamical, and physiological discoveries of 
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The ancient 
Greek thinkers inherited from prehistory a conception of 
the world as a system contained within the sky. Figura- 
tively speaking the Greek thinker was a chick within the 
egg-shell and he never really succeeded in pecking his 
way out. The modern thinker has done so. Now this 
egg was the geocentric system; that is to say, a world with 
the earth at its center surrounded by the heavenly spheres, 
a world, as conceived by the Aristotelian, finite in diameter 
with God immediately beyond, a world in which we 
ascend from earth to the higher and supernatural realms 
of the stars, and a world in which change and decay and 
all that we call natural ends this side of the moon. Though 
some Ionian philosophers and a few Pythagorean as- 
tronomers may have thought of the world in ways that 
contradicted all of this, they lacked the facts that could 
win the intellectual classes from the theories which agreed 
so well with prehistoric myths and with ordinary sense 
perception. In short, Greek thought failed to break 
through the egg-shell; and the shell remained unbroken 
until Copernicus and his successors made their way out 
and discovered a universe infinite in extent, a universe in 
which the earth occupies a position but infinitesimally 
important, and a universe in which matter and its me- 
chanical changes of configuration are present everywhere. 
What had been before a world in which demons and the 
supernatural play an important part, now was seen to be a 
world dynamical throughout, to be one vast machine. 



322 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

In less than two hundred years, from Galilei to Laplace, 
this revolution in thought was an accomplished fact. 

With Laplace we get a complete naturalistic mechanical 
world conception. It was complete because by his time 
mathematics, mechanics and gravitational astronomy were 
sufficiently advanced to enable the thinker to give in their 
terms a rational account of the origin of solar systems and 
of the behavior of such systems when once in existence. 
Again, it was complete for by his time sufficient informa- 
tion was at hand to conceive and to justify the hypothesis 
that nature is a perpetual motion machine persisting in 
its world building and world destruction throughout 
infinite time. Finally, it was complete for all nature's 
processes could then be thought of as following by mathe- 
matical necessity out of preceding stages and in turn 
giving rise by the same necessity to succeeding stages. 

But the name of Laplace marks only the end of two 
centuries of naturalistic development from Galilei. Al- 
ready in the early part of the seventeenth century specula- 
tive thinkers foresaw in principle what Laplace and the 
intellectual men of his day had far more evidence for be- 
lieving, that the world is one vast machine ruled by 
mathematical law. Such earlier thinkers before Laplace 
and before Newton, were Hobbes, Descartes, Spinoza and 
many of their contemporaries. From them and their 
successors the intellectual world had rapidly learned to 
adopt a naturalistic philosophy, so that by the end of the 
seventeenth century and the early eighteenth century 
naturalism had become as a matter of course the concep- 
tion of the world entertained by the educated and thought- 
ful. 1 

1 Some sixteenth century thinkers also, as I have already pointed 
out in the preceding chapter, were naturalists. The word naturalism 
is somewhat ambiguous, having both a generic and a specific mean- 
ing. Generically, it is the opposite of supernaturalism and is the 



RATIONALISM AND NATURALISM 323 

Let us now turn to the study of the influence of both 
rationalism and naturalism in certain fields of thought that 
are especially interesting as typical of the philosophy of 
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, such fields as 
religion, physiology, psychology, and social and political 
theory. 

For further study read: 

Hoffding, History of Modern Philosophy, 212-235; 

Paulsen, F. (transl. Thilly), Introduction to Philosophy, 
1907, 53-74; 

Ward, J., Naturalism and Agnosticism, Vol. I; 

Windelband, History of Philosophy, 399-425. 
For more extensive study read: 

Lange, F. A. (transl. Thomas), History of Materialism, Vol. 
I, 215-330 and Vol. II, 1-123; 

Smith, Studies in the Cartesian Philosophy. 

3. Rationalism and naturalism in religion. — The in- 
fluence of the rationalistic and mechanical conception of 
the world was quickly manifest in religious thought, and 
naturalism soon gave rise to new religious philosophies. 
In the first place, a machine-world cannot include the 
working of non-mechanical and supernatural agents, such 
as spirits or devils; for in a world ruled by mechanical law 
nothing other than events consistent with such law can 
be assumed to take place. All other happenings are but 
myth and superstition. In the second place, as a perpetual 
motion machine the world is not a stage on which divine 
plans and purposes are seen playing their part from day to 

name of the doctrine that all of existence lends itself to scientific 
explanation. Specifically, it is the name of the doctrine that all of 
existence lends itself to mechanical explanation. In other words, 
naturalism in its specific, or narrow meaning is the belief that all 
science can be reduced to mechanics. It is in this latter sense, which 
of course includes the generic sense, that I have used the term in this 
section. 



324 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

day or even from age to age. What happens, happens by- 
inexorable law and by mathematical necessity. As it was 
absurd for men to think that the earth was the center of 
the universe with the entire drama of creation playing 
about the earth and directed toward the earth as the key 
to the plot, so it is absurd for man to regard his existence 
and his human interests as revealing the ends and plans of 
creation. Rather he must away altogether with every 
teleological theory of things and events and learn to see in 
every object the mere mathematical result of nature's 
mechanical processes. Ends or plans are not causes, for 
the only causes nature exhibits are the motions and con- 
figurations of material particles. If then the wonderful 
structure of animals and plants and the marvellous adapta- 
tion between them and their habitats seem the result of 
intelligent planning, he must rid himself of this illusion 
and gain a new way of viewing these things. Nature has 
produced these precisely by the same fundamental means 
by which she has produced all other things. They have 
come into being because material particles happened to 
have taken some extremely complex and unusual con- 
figuration. If you enquire why these particles happened to 
be in this configuration instead of in some other you merely 
force the naturalist to appeal to preceding stages in the 
configuration of the system under study. You raise the 
same sort of problem as though you asked why does the 
wind blow, and why north instead of south and why at 
forty miles an hour instead of at ten? The most science can 
do is to search for the preceding conditions of the atmos- 
phere and of the factors varying the pressure of the air and 
thus arrive at the physical causes from which the fact to be 
explained follows by mathematical necessity. Thus if we 
knew enough, we could show that man and his history are 
but the mathematically necessary later configurations of 
part of the matter that once formed the solar nebula. 



RATIONALISM AND NATURALISM 325 

Besides leading to this antiteleological conception of na- 
ture, seventeenth and eighteenth century rationalism and 
naturalism led directly to three heretical hypotheses; and 
rationalism at least determined the typical forms taken by 
orthodox theology. Let us consider immediately the three 
heretical hypotheses. First, was pantheism. God is but 
another name for nature or the substance of nature. 
Second, was deism with its natural religion. The universe 
is a machine that like a clock the great clock-maker, God 
has constructed, wound up and set going; and of course it 
now appears merely as a clock performing its mechanical 
motions quite in accord with the laws of dynamics. Third, 
was of course an out and out atheism. God is a super- 
fluous hypothesis. 

Naturalistic pantheism had already made its appearance 
in the sixteenth century and most notably in the writings 
of Giordano Bruno; but its most famous teacher was the 
seventeenth century philosopher Benedict Spinoza. He 
defines God as the infinite and eternal substance from 
which the world follows as conclusions follow from their 
premises by logical necessity. Otherwise expressed, the 
substance of all things is God of whom they are but finite 
modes, and these modes are related to the substance by 
the same inexorable logical relation as are the many prop- 
erties of a triangle to the triangle as defined by the geo- 
metrician. 

Deism taught as its chief tenet the distinctly rationalis- 
tic doctrine that reason is the ultimate test of revelation. 
Christianity is essentially reasonable, therefore thoughtful 
men should subject it to rational standards of criticism, 
and should search both nature and the human mind for 
evidence of God's existence and of his ways and laws. 
Again Christianity is reasonable in that it is not mysterious 
and in that it is and has always been a universal religion, 
the religion of all men, everywhere and at all times. Evi- 



326 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

dently then Christianity is merely, what man in those days 
called, a natural religion. So conceived it excludes much 
that the church has put into the confessions of faith and 
includes little besides the belief in God, immortality, and 
the future reward and punishment of man's deeds, which 
beliefs deists argued are innate and therefore universal and 
valid. 

The deistic movement began in England late in the 
seventeenth century and early in the following century. 
From England it spread to France and to Germany, and 
remained prominent on the continent to the days following 
the fall of Napoleon's empire. 1 

Atheism, and especially an atheistic materialism, was a 
natural and logical conclusion for the follower of Descartes 
to draw. If nature about us, the body, and the nervous 
system within us are but machines and if the world mech- 
anism can be thought of as eternal, God is a. superfluous 
scientific hypothesis. Moreover, since these were the days 
when religion itself seemed but a matter of reason, a purely 
intellectual matter; it was logical to add that what is 
superfluous for science is superfluous also for the conduct 
of human life. 2 

These unorthodox theological doctrines were prominent 
in the late eighteenth century; and though they became 
decidedly less prominent in the nineteenth century, none- 
theless they have persisted as a noticeable part of our 
present complex intellectual life. 

Let us turn to the influence of rationalism upon orthodox 
religious thought. I have already pointed out that theo- 

1 Prominent among these rationalistic theists were Locke (fl. c. 
1675); Toland (fl. c. 1710); Collins {fl. c. 1715); Tindal (fl. c. 1695); 
Voltaire (fl. c. 1735); Reimarus (fl. c. 1740); and many other writers 
in England, France and Germany. 

2 Among the prominent thinkers of this group were Holbach (fl. c. 
1765) and probably most of his contemporary materialists in France, 
such as La Mettrie, Lamartine, Diderot and Helv&ius. 



RATIONALISM AND NATURALISM 327 

logical thinking in the days of the reformation and the 
counter-reformation (that is the sixteenth and seventeenth 
centuries) remained essentially of the same type as medie- 
val scholasticism, and as such was distinctly rationalistic. 
Some thinkers went back to St. Augustine as did Calvin 
and the French Jansenists, some kept to Aristotle and St. 
Thomas as did especially the Jesuits ; but these theologians 
and most others were alike at least in presenting the doc- 
trines of the church as matters to be proved or disproved, 
to be tested and verified, by the deductive reasonings 
of scholars and pedants in their libraries isolated from the 
world without and ignorant of the actual factors that con- 
trol religious history and development. 

The influence of the naturalistic movement could not 
change the essential character of this older theology. 
It could however influence it by lessening the respect for 
the older doctrines and for the religious life. This it did. 
At no other time has Christianity been so impoverished, 
so much a mere formality, as it was in the eighteenth 
and early nineteenth centuries. We may say, it has never 
been taken less seriously even by itself. Within and with- 
out the Church it was the "age of reason," the age of 
"free thinking." 

For further study read: 

McGiffert, A. C, Rise of Modern Religious Ideas, 1915; 

Paulsen, Introduction to Philosophy, 145-192; 

Windelband, History of Philosophy, 486-499. 
For more extensive study read: 

McGiffert, A. C, Protestant Thought before Kant, 1911; 

Stephen, L., History of English Thought in the Eighteenth 
Century, 2d ed., 1881, Vol. I; 

Locke, Reasonableness of Christianity; 

Hume, Dialogues concerning Natural Religion; and Natural 
History of Religion; 

Toland, Christianity not Mysterious; 



328 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

Collins, Discourse on Freethinking; 
Tindal, Christianity as Old as Creation. 

4. Rationalism and naturalism in physiology. — Under 
the influence of the discoveries in anatomy in the late 
sixteenth century and in anatomy and physiology in the 
early seventeenth century the bodies of animals and plants 
came to be conceived as machines and to be explained by 
means of mechanics. From Hobbes, Harvey, and Des- 
cartes to the writers in the time of the French revolution 
man in particular was thought of as being a mere machine 
though of course a more complicated machine than the 
brutes and plants as they in turn are more complicated 
than inanimate machines. Thus, as animism was driven 
out of astronomy, so was it from biology also; and as the 
principles of mechanics were thought sufficient to explain 
the world of the stars, so were they thought sufficient to 
explain also the facts of life. 1 

But the living body not only seemed a mere machine, it 
also appeared easily explicable. Hence a purely deductive 
mechanics of life that would account fully for its origin, 
development and working seemed not only possible but 
already in part realized. Thus from the time of Descartes 
to the days of the nineteenth century men did not hesitate 
to speculate extensively regarding life and to deduce a 
priori on the basis of what seems to us extremely little 

1 The fact that should be here especially marked by the student of 
the history of philosophy is that the living organism seemed to men 
in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries vastly simpler than it 
does to the biologist to-day. These times preceded microscopic 
anatomy and biochemistry and therefore a purely mechanical 
biology seemed within easy reach; whereas to us such a biology seems 
indefinitely remote. In short, the facts of life revealed to us during 
the past century by means of the microscope and by means of bio- 
chemistry have made the problems of life seem a thousandfold more 
complex than they seemed to Hobbes and Descartes. 



RATIONALISM AND NATURALISM 329 

information elaborate biological theories. 1 However, in 
saying this we must not forget that these days were also 
the ones in which biology was rapidly becoming an experi- 
mental and inductive science. In short, it was a time of 
transition in biology when rationalist and experimentalist 
and the man that in some matters is an experimentalist 
and in most others a rationalist lived and worked, studied 
and wrote in the same intellectual world. 2 

For further study read: 

Huxley, T. H., On the Hypothesis that Animals are Auto- 
mata. 

5. Rationalism and naturalism in psychology. 3 — 

Philosophically more interesting than the rationalistic 
biology is the rationalistic psychology of the seventeenth 
and succeeding centuries. This psychology can be best 
illustrated and studied in the Cartesian school of thinkers, 
Descartes and his followers to the present day, and in the 
English school of associationists and their followers es- 

1 Even the nineteenth century has had her "deductive" biologists 
to whom life seemed simple enough to justify the attempt to derive 
the principles of biology from the ultimate principles of physical 
science. Best known among such attempts is that of Herbert Spen- 
cer in his Principles of Biology (1867). 

2 A great exception to the general rule presented in this section was 
the revival of animism by Stahl and the revival, in France in the late 
eighteenth century, of vitalism. From this revival came the wide- 
spread doctrine of a "vital force," obtaining until the middle of the 
nineteenth century and later. 

3 Among the prominent seventeenth and eighteenth century 
thinkers who influenced especially psychological theory the attention 
of the student of the history of philosophy should be called to the 
following: Hobbes (fl. 1630); Descartes (fl. 1635); Spinoza (fl. 1670); 
Locke (fl. 1670); Berkeley (fl. 1725); Hume (fl. 1750); Condillac 
(fl. 1755); Hartley (fl. 1745); Helv&ius (fl. 1755); La Mettrie (fl. 
1750); Kant (fl. 1765); Priestley (fl. 1775); Bentham (fl. 1790); 
Cabanis (fl. 1795); and James Mill (fl. 1815). 



330 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

pecially in France. Descartes, following Greek and medi- 
eval tradition, regarded man's states of consciousness as 
phenomena of a substance radically distinct from matter, 
a spiritual substance, or soul; and for this reason and be- 
cause of Descartes' great influence, the doctrine of two 
substances, matter and spirit, and the resulting belief in 
the irreducibility of the mental to the physical are appro- 
priately called Cartesian dualism. This doctrine soon be- 
gan to prove an extremely embarrassing theory for the 
Cartesian and many Cartesians therefore began to draw 
the conclusion which fitted better the general naturalistic 
philosophy, that is, materialism. Thus there have been 
in the seventeenth and succeeding centuries two closely 
related theories of the mental, Cartesian dualism and ma- 
terialism. Let us study each briefly in outline. 

By postulating two substances which cannot interact 
Cartesian dualism faced immediately the difficulty of 
explaining the seeming interaction of mind and body. 
If matter is susceptible of only mechanical processes, 
in other words, if all that happens in the physical world 
is but the displacement of particles of matter; then the 
only consequence of moving matter is further motion 
either in the same body or in some body with which it has 
collided, and, conversely, the only way in which one body 
can be made to move from rest is by the impact of some 
other moving body. But the most commonplace facts of 
daily life seem to show that body and non-body, that is, 
mind, interact. Motions in the body seem to produce 
mental states, and mental states seem to produce motions in 
the body. For example, a blow causes pain and fear causes 
flight. Here we have a typical rationalistic problem, a 
problem upon which more speculative ingenuity has been at 
work than perhaps upon any other problem; for the prob- 
lem has remained prominent from the days of Descartes 
to our own time and promises to continue prominent as 



RATIONALISM AND NATURALISM 331 

long as Cartesian dualism persists. In all, three famous 
solutions have been proposed, each an admirable example 
of rationalism. The first solution denies any interaction 
between the two substances and postulates that God per- 
forms a miracle in each instance of seeming interaction, 
some million millions per diem;, or it postulates that at 
creation the two substances were so harmonized that for 
all time they would behave as though they were interacting 
in spite of the fact that they were not. This latter doc- 
trine is called the " pre-established harmony;" and is 
often illustrated by the figure of a perfect clockmaker 
who has made two clocks that keep always the same time 
and so appear to influence one another's behavior, whereas 
their harmony was pre-established at the beginning. 
Thus God at creation so arranged nature that when, for 
example, a bee stings a child and causes certain neural 
changes in the child's central nervous system, the spiritual 
substance will produce the pain in harmony with this 
physical fact and without any interaction between brain 
and soul! Evidently these first solutions could not long 
satisfy the scientific psychologist. 

The second solution of which Spinoza may be called the 
originator is the doctrine called parallelism. This doctrine 
attempts to straddle the difficulty of Cartesian dualism by 
both holding to dualism and rejecting dualism. Though 
the parallelist admits a fundamental difference between 
the physical and the mental, he asserts that both are none 
the less the phenomena of only one substance. This sub- 
stance is neither the matter nor the spirit of Cartesianism 
but a substance of which matter and spirit are two funda- 
mental types of manifestation. Mind and body do not 
interact, for the physical manifestations of the ultimate 
substance have laws and relations which make the physical 
a closed system and in a similar way the mental forms a 
closed system. However, since both systems are but two 



332 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

sides of the same thing or substance, every physical event 
is correlated with a unique mental event and every mental 
event with a unique physical event thus giving quite the 
semblance of interaction. That is to say, moving matter 
does not produce mental states and mental states do not 
produce motions in matter; but both, being present and 
correlated with some unknown state of the ultimate sub- 
stance of which they are phenomena, have uniform laws 
of sequence and coexistence. Again, inasmuch as the 
two are phenomena of the same substance, there is for 
every mental event a corresponding physical event and 
for every physical event a corresponding mental event. 
In short, the parallelist is forced by his logic to proceed 
from explaining known instances of mental life to assuming 
that mental events are as universal as are physical events, 
a doctrine called panpsychism. 1 

A third possible solution of the difficulty raised by 
Cartesian dualism is to retain interaction as a fact and to 
try by ingenuity to make it consistent with mechanics. 
This doctrine is frankly a return to animism. 

But the Cartesan could avoid all of these difficulties 
by giving up his dualism and frankly accepting material- 
ism; and as the decades passed many thinkers preferred 
this solution. These materialists were especially promi- 
nent in France from the middle of the eighteenth century 
on into the nineteenth century, and materialism seems to 
be not infrequent among the intellectual classes at the 
present time. According to the materialist the mental 
is not the manifestation of some second substance but is 
as physical as is any other process of the living organism. 
It is merely an obscure name of brain motions or of chemi- 
cal-physical processes. 

Thus far we have taken Cartesian dualism and one of 

1 Parallelism is widely held by psychologists to-day and this im- 
plies that most psychologists are still Cartesian dualists. 



RATIONALISM AND NATURALISM 333 

its metaphysical problems (of a distinctly rationalistic 
type) to illustrate rationalism and naturalism in seven- 
teenth and eighteenth century psychology. Let us take 
a second important illustration of rationalistic psychology, 
the associationist psychology. The seventeenth century 
father of associationism was Hobbes. But more influen- 
tial than Hobbes were Locke, Hartley, Hume, and their 
successors, especially in England and France. The as- 
sociationist endeavored to discover a mechanics of mind 
corresponding to the mechanics of physical science and to 
do so needed to discover a universal principle by means 
of which man's mental life could be completely explained. 
This principle was found in sensationalism and the ac- 
companying law of association. Figuratively speaking, the 
mind starts an empty tablet on which are written from 
childhood to old age the sensations of color, sound, touch, 
taste, odor and the rest, man's organs of sense and nervous 
system being the instruments of writing. Then by a 
process of connecting these sense data, called the associa- 
tion of ideas, the complex adult mind, including the mem- 
ory, thought, personality, character and sentiments of the 
mature man is formed. In the first place, this sensation- 
alism and associationism makes man's mind the creature of 
his environment; for it makes his character, knowledge, 
science and logic a matter of sensations and their com- 
bination. In the second place, associationism makes the 
individual mental differences between men also a matter 
solely of education. Thus it forms precisely the needed 
foundation for the democratic doctrine that men are born 
equal and that education alone is needed to perfect human 
life and to bring into being the ideal democratic society. 

For further study read: 

Paulsen, Introduction to Philosophy, 74-111; 

McDougall, W., Body and Mind, 1911, 46-148; 

Dessoir, Outlines of the History of Psychology, chapter III; 



334 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

Warren, H. C, Mental Association from Plato to Hume, 
Psycholog. Review 1916, 23. 
For more extensive study read: 

Klemm, History of Psychology; 

Warren, H. C, History of Association Psychology (forth- 
coming). 

6. Rationalism and naturalism in social and moral 
science. 1 — If ignoring the details of the complex develop- 
ment of modern moral, social, political, and economic 
science we regard only the general characteristics of this 
development, we behold the same general course from the 
rationalistic stage to the experimental, or inductive stage. 
However, one important difference between the develop- 
ment of the physical sciences and that of the moral and 
social sciences appears; for the former became rapidly 
experimental, whereas the latter have but slowly ceased 
to be rationalistic, or deductive. Indeed, only in recent 
decades have students of morals and of society deliberately 
striven to set their prejudices and assumptions aside, to 
let the facts tell their own unbiased story and to seek to 
verify theory by a genuine appeal to fact. Hence though 
moral and social science was a prominent part of modern 
European thought as early as the sixteenth century and 
continued to be so to our own time; the history of these 
sciences is largely a succession of rival theories based upon 
quite inadequate information and strongly influenced by 
the prevailing moral and social struggles and movements 
within the age or the nation of the thinker. 

As might be expected rationalistic thinkers grossly 

1 Among the numerous political theorists of the sixteenth, seven- 
teenth and eighteenth centuries the attention of the student of the 
history of philosophy should be called to the following: Machiavelli 
(fl. 1510); Bodin (fl. 1570) ; Althusius (fl. 1600); Grotius (fl. 1625); 
Milton (fl. 1650); Hobbes (fl. 1630); Spinoza (fl. 1670); Locke (fl. 
1670); Montesquieu (fl. 1725); Rousseau (fl. 1750); Adam Smith 
(fl. 1765); and Bentham (fl. 1790). 



RATIONALISM AND NATURALISM 335 

underestimated the complexity of man's moral and social 
life; and as a consequence the problem conceived as simple 
was given a simple and, as it seemed to the theorist, a 
self-evident solution. These solutions were based upon 
equally a priori theories of the nature of man. In general, 
man seemed a presocial individual by nature; that is to 
say, man seemed older than society and seemed to be by 
nature an individualist that had to be socialized to make 
even rudimentary society possible. Put in still other 
words, man seemed more like the lonely carnivora than 
like the herd animal which he is now known to be. Again, 
man was conceived to be by nature either a struggler to 
preserve self or a seeker after pleasure; and therefore social 
theory tended to find in the one or the other of the cor- 
responding instincts the controlling factor in the origin and 
development of society. To-day we know man to have 
neither instinct, but rather to have many inborn traits 
that lead him to seek food, to fight or avoid certain dangers, 
to compete for social approval and to be satisfied or an- 
noyed in certain situations. Again, the rationalistic 
thinker tended to regard man as decidedly more rational 
than man is and thus to underestimate grossly the part 
played by instinct and blind behavior in developing morals 
and society. One famous illustration of this tendency was 
the contract theory of the origin of society. By this 
theory society was thought to have arisen in somewhat 
the same way as that in which two men may form a part- 
nership and sign the requisite agreement. The origin of 
society was an essentially rational contract whose terms 
could be identified by the theorist. Hence a deduction 
from these assumed terms enabled the theorist to criticise 
the moral and political movements of his day and to show 
wherein they agreed or disagreed with the terms of the 
contract upon which society as such rested either in fact 
or in principle. 



336 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

For further study read: 

Paulsen, F., System of Ethics, 126-215; 

Stephen, L., History of English Thought in the Eighteenth 

Century, Vol. II. 
For more extensive study read: 

Dunning, W. A., History of Political Theories, from Luther 

to Montesquieu; 
Davidson, W. L., Political Thought in England from Ben- 

tham to J. S. Mill (Home University Library) ; 
Sidgwick, H., Development of European Polity, 316- 

377. 

7. The development of toleration. — The seventeenth 
century, the century of rationalism, was both a time of 
religious intolerance and a time in which the spirit of 
toleration had its birth. State and Church for centuries 
past, yes, for all time past, had been united; and men had 
not come truly to dissociate the two. For the savage and 
the barbarian, religion is distinctly a group, or tribal 
matter, and genuinely personal religion is only incidental 
to folk religion and worship. Hence Church and State 
issued from the middle ages in closest alliance, and hence 
the religious revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth 
centuries was a serious political as well as religious 
metamorphosis. The general attitude of the people of 
the seventeenth century was that the State had both 
the right and the duty to insist upon a state religion 
and upon the conformity of all citizens to the doctrine, 
discipline and worship of the state church. In contrast 
with the attitude taken by society, a new attitude of 
religious tolerance was taken by a few thinkers in this 
enlightened age; and because of the new spirit of en- 
lightenment and because of the economic and political 
transformation Europe was undergoing, these leaders 
won their cause during the eighteenth and nineteenth 
centuries. 



RATIONALISM AND NATURALISM 337 

For further study read: 

Bury, History of Freedom of Thought (Home University 

Library) ; 
Lecky, Rise and Influence of Rationalism, chapter IV. 
For more extensive study read: 

Schaff, P., Progress of Religious Freedom as Shown in the 

History of Toleration Acts, 1889; 
Milton, Areopagitica (ed. by Hales); 
Locke, Letters concerning Toleration. 

8. The idea of progress. — Perhaps the greatest intellec- 
tual achievement resulting from the complex intellectual 
forces which we have been studying was the rise of the 
idea of progress. In ancient days nations progressed but 
they did so unreflectively, they did so without making 
progress itself an enterprise. The Christian Church of 
the ancient and medieval world had her mission directed 
toward another world and cared nothing about progress 
in this world nor taught her children to care. But in the 
seventeenth century men discovered the ideal of progress. 
The thought dawned in their minds that far greater 
achievements were open to mankind than those yet at- 
tained in science, morals, government and society. They 
felt themselves at the beginning of a great age, an age in 
which research and reason would discover ways and 
means to make the life of man far better and far nobler 
than it had ever been. Above all, they felt that science 
was to be the chief instrument. As we look back upon 
their dreams and hopes, we see that the task was far more 
difficult and the problem far more complex than they 
knew or could know it to be. Yet, Utopian as were their 
thoughts, the results have really been far more than they 
ever dreamed. The sciences they began have revolu- 
tionized the world, the struggles for tolerance, democracy 
and freedom which they commenced have brought a hu- 
manitarianism and an ideal of social progress and effi- 



338 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

ciency they little foresaw. And the idea of progress has 
become not merely the dream of a few thinkers but the 
conscious enterprise of the nations. 

For further study read: 

Brailsford, H. N., Shelley, Godwin, and their Circle (Home 

University Library); 
Flint, History of the Philosophy of History, 87-104. 
For more extensive study read: 

Bacon, Advancement of Learning; 

Herder, Ideen zur Geschichte der Menschheit; 

Condorcet, Tableau historique des progres de Tesprit hu- 

main; 
Delvaille, J., Essai sur Thistorique de Fidee de Progres 
jusqu' a la fin du XVIIIieme Siecle, 1910. 

9. The effect of naturalism upon the general intellec- 
tual life of the modern world. — In conclusion, let us ask 
what has been the effect of the rationalistic and naturalistic 
movement upon the general intellectual life of the modern 
world? The answer can be given in one word, enlighten- 
ment. Enlightenment has denoted many traits of which 
five are most prominent. First, it has denoted the elim- 
inating of superstition and the acquiring of a distinctly 
naturalistic, or scientific attitude toward a vast number 
of the events and objects that form our environment. 
The processes of nature from the phenomena of the dis- 
tant heavens and from the phenomena of the weather to 
the causes and cure of disease and to the growth and 
education of the child's intellect and character have come 
to seem to the intelligent man a proper object of research 
and of scientific explanation. Even though prescience 
obtains in limited fields, this change from medieval pre- 
scientific and barbaric belief and custom has been a vast 
transformation. Second, enlightenment has denoted the 
freeing of personal religion from that of the group, at 






RATIONALISM AND NATURALISM 339 

least to a large extent, and the freeing of thought. No 
doubt much religious intolerance still obtains in fact; but 
among the most cultured peoples complete legal and polit- 
ical freedom have been secured for religious non- 
conformists, and Church and State have tended to become 
dissociated. Third, enlightenment has denoted the spread 
of humanitarianism. This has been especially evident in 
the change in customs of treating the poor, the debtor, 
the insane, the delinquent and the criminal. True, much 
that is barbarous still remains; but the change in these 
customs during the past three centuries has been vast. 
Again, humanitarianism has been evident in the growing 
abhorrence of war and its cruelties. Finally, humani- 
tarianism has been evident in the general effort to amel- 
iorate the lot of the wage earner and the peasant, and to 
educate the masses. Fourth, the enlightenment has in- 
creased utilitarianism. This has been manifest not only 
in the vast industrial, commercial and engineering enter- 
prises of the modern world but in the multitudinous lesser 
enterprises from the exterminating of mosquitoes to the 
exterminating of disease and from the growth of social 
efficiency to the rise of utilitarian curricula and rational 
methods of instruction in schools and higher institu- 
tions of learning. Fifth and finally, the enlighten- 
ment has denoted the spread of democracy and demo- 
cratic laws and institutions. It has given us the gospel 
of liberty, equality, and fraternity, and of economic 
freedom. 

For further study read: 

Brailsford, H. N., Shelley, Godwin, and their Circle; 
Morley, J., essays on Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau, and Con- 
dorcet. 
For more extensive study read: 

Stephen, L., History of English Thought in the Eighteenth 
Century; 



340 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 



Lecky, Rise and Influence of Rationalism; 
MacDonald, F., Studies in the France of Voltaire and Rous- 
seau, 1895; 
L6vy-Bruhl, History of Modern Philosophy in France; 
Cambridge Modern History, Vol. VIII, chapters I and XXV. 



CHAPTER XXIV 

PHENOMENALISM, POSITIVISM, AND IDEALISM 

1. Introductory. — A second philosophical movement 
of great importance became prominent in the eighteenth 
century having its source in the earlier rationalistic and 
naturalistic movement. This second movement included 
at least three important tendencies which are named re- 
spectively phenomenalism, empiricism and its resulting 
positivism, and idealism. All three were closely related. 
Indeed, the two latter tendencies developed directly out 
of the first, that is out of phenomenalism. 

2. The terms, Phenomenalism and Empiricism defined. 
— By phenomenalism is meant the doctrine that the 
immediate object of all our knowledge is mental, a doctrine 
which follows logically from the conception of the mental 
held by the intellectual world from the time of the Greek 
thinkers. Prescientific man with his animistic hypothesis 
leaves the nature of perception and knowing a negligible 
and comfortable mystery; but as science arose, thought- 
ful men distinguished between "the appearance of things" 
and "the things themselves" or between the objects of 
sense and the entities of science. 1 This distinction be- 
tween the world of sense and the world of science led men 
to attend to what we call our mental states and to ask: 
What are these mental states and how are they related to 

1 In modern phrase, as I look at a piece of wood I do not see the 
atoms of the chemist, or as I hear a sound I do not behold the air 
waves of which the physicist speaks, or again, as I see the room it 
has acute and obtuse angles in its corners whereas the architect's 
plans imply that all these angles are right angles. 

341 



342 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

the entities of science? In answering this question, no 
doubt men continued to be much influenced by animism; 
for animism led men to think of their mental states as 
states not of things without the body but as states of an 
entity within the body, the soul, and it led men to think 
that the mental state and the external object may be 
neither similar nor numerically identical. Thus a dualism 
arose between the world within the mind, the mental 
states, and the world without, the entities of science. 
What the mind experiences is only mental, its own states, 
its feelings, its sensations, and its thoughts; whereas the 
world of things without remains without, never entering 
the soul. The break between the two worlds is complete 
and a skepticism arises which questions whether or not we 
can know aught but our own mental life. In short, the 
only world we experience is a subjective world, a world of 
mind and not a world of things; and we have no guarantee 
that the two worlds in any way resemble one another. 
By empiricism is meant the denial of rationalism's claim 
that man has in his mind the a priori principles by which 
science can get, through reflection or intuition, its fun- 
damental and eternal groundwork. Empiricism asserts 
that man comes into this world innocent of knowledge, 
and that all the knowledge he ever gains, is what expe- 
rience brings him. In other words, what experience 
teaches, man can learn; but what experience does not 
teach, man can never know. This conclusion at once 
leads on to the important question : Does not science, and 
especially rationalistic science, pretend to know more 
than experience actually teaches? Or reworded, Should 
not science be cautious to formulate her doctrines so that 
she never even seems to assert more than man can literally 
experience? The affirmative answer to this question is 
called positivism. But this answer leads in turn to a sec- 
ond question: If science may not go beyond experience, 



PHENOMENALISM, POSITIVISM, AND IDEALISM 343 

can she explain what we do experience? The positivist re- 
plies: No. Science can describe but science cannot explain 
that which is experienced. In short, science is merely the 
systematic description of man's experience; and therefore 
science when it pretends to be an explanation of what man 
experiences, becomes an invalid rationalism. 

Let me expound this important doctrine of positivism 
at greater length. As phenomenalism maintains, man 
experiences only his own mental states and their order; 
therefore, the positivist po ints out, man does n ot expe- 
rienc&-47hf»-4affical or causal connections between things 
in nature or between natu£feafi^ext5e"rience^ That is to 



say, nature does not reveal such connections in man's sen- 
sory experience; and therefore when he tries to ascertain 
her laws he is obliged to go beyond the evidence the senses 
furnish. All that man experiences is the mere succession of 
events. He sees ice melt in the sunshine, but he does not see 
why ice melts. He sees the pendulum swing back and forth 
in equal intervals, but does not see why it so swings. He 
sees that his arm moves when he so wills, but he does not 
see why. Moreover, he cannot appeal to innate ideas to 
help him to explain his experiences; for there are no innate 
ideas such as the rationalist claims to possess and there are 
no ideas in man's mind corresponding to the abstract 
entities of the mathematical and physical sciences. For 
example, man has no innate insight into the fundamental 
principles of mechanics. In fact, he often believes what 
physical science denies, the spontaneous origin and cessa- 
tion of motion, the freedom of the will and similar animistic 
hypotheses. Again, man cannot picture empty space, 
infinity, matter (that is, with all qualities abstracted), 
causal necessity or substance. These are mere words or 
symbols and not genuine ideas. Finally, it is not essential 
that man should have the information rationalism pre- 
tends to furnish. All man needs to know in order to pros- 



344 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

per is precisely what experience is capable of giving, the 
succession of events. Thus to avoid the fire man needs to 
experience what happens when he touches fire; but he does 
not need to know the ultimate rationalistic explanation of 
why fire burns. 1 

These two doctrines, phenomenalism and positivism, 
sound astonishingly unlike rationalism; but as a matter 
of fact they grew directly out of the tenets of the rational- 
istic movement and belong to that movement. Descartes' 
dualism between mind and body, the so-called " Cartesian 
dualism' ' was a sufficient starting point; for it forced 
the philosopher to enquire into the nature and possibility 
of science. 2 

3. Phenomenalism and Idealism. — The result of this 

1 In the phrases of recent thought, man, like any other organism, 
has the traits that enable him to survive and to reproduce his kind; 
and this is all that nature requires of him. From the standpoint of 
nature it is no more necessary for him to know the real world or to ex- 
plain that world than it is necessary for the oak to know meteorology 
or the chemistry of the soil. What is necessary is that the oak have 
the responses that will make it thrive. As long as this condition is 
fulfilled what matters it that the oak is ignorant? The same is true 
of man. He has the system of responses called knowledge; and all 
that is required of his knowledge is to lead him to the right responses. 
Insanity would be precisely as valuable biologically as sanity, or 
delusion as correct insight, provided the resulting responses adjusted 
man to environment, a fact to which the oak bears witness, for in its 
complete ignorance the oak adjusts itself to the conditions of life 
with a skill far beyond the wisdom of the most learned scientist to 
adjust it. To sum up, according to positivism man can but watch his 
sensations, mark their order and secure accurate descriptions of the 
world called our experience. And the thing he cannot do, is to explain 
the things themselves that lie beyond this experience and that do not 
reveal to him what they are or why they are. 

2 Among the most prominent Cartesian students of human knowl- 
edge in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are: Descartes 
(fl. 1635); Malebranche (fl. 1680) ; Spinoza (ft. 1670); Locke (ft. 1670); 
Leibniz (fl. 1685); Berkeley (fl. 1725); Hume (fl. 1750); Kant (fl. 
1765). 



PHENOMENALISM, POSITIVISM, AND IDEALISM 345 

enquiry, beginning with Descartes and lasting to living 
Cartesian dualists, has been a revival of ancient phe- 
nomenalism, of a phenomenalism similar to that of 
Democritus. It has been aptly nicknamed from an illus- 
tration of its doctrine, "the metaphysics of the telephone 
exchange." The phenomenalist, or subjectivist seems to 
assert that each mind is like an imaginary telephone op- 
erator born a lonely Robinson Crusoe not on an island 
but in a telephone exchange. Here this person has through- 
out life been receiving the messages from a world that he 
has never seen and by hypothesis never can see, or ex- 
perience in any way other than through his telephone 
instruments. From these messages he may infer that 
there are other Robinson Crusoes and that there is a vast 
physical but unperceived world in which he himself lives. 
At least, it is within the conditions of the illustration that 
he may infer such an external world. But two other pos- 
sible inferences remain also within these conditions. He 
may infer that only these Robinson Crusoes, including 
himself, exist; or he may infer that the world that he di- 
rectly perceives, namely, his exchange and its instruments, 
are the entire universe and that the messages he seems 
to be receiving are the direct product of the receiving 
instruments themselves. 

That is to say, the Cartesian dualist makes every 
mental state purely subjective, he makes every mental 
state the possession only of the mind whose state it is; 
and therefore he seems to assert for each mind a condition 
of affairs quite comparable to the lot of the aforementioned 
Robinson Crusoe. Each man perceives or is aware of his 
own mental states and of nothing else in the whole universe. 
He is aware of nothing else; for by definition whatever he 
is aware of, is a mental state, and by theory, or assumption, 
mental states have no existence other than in the mind 
whose states they are. If this then be the lot of each mind, 



346 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

the philosopher may make any of the following inferences : 
(1) He may infer with the ignorant and thoughtless that 
our mental states, or let us say the world of our experience, 
duplicates an objective world that in the main would be 
what it is whether or not we had been born. In short, he 
may infer that to all intents and purposes we do perceive 
the objective world. (2) With Democritus, Descartes and 
Locke he may infer that there is an objective world and 
that by thought or experiment the scientist can learn its 
nature, though admitting that man can never perceive 
or directly experience this world. Thus he decides that 
the objective world is an inferred world, a world of science 
quite unlike the world of perception, or in Greek, a nou- 
menal world ; whereas the experienced world is phenomenal. 
As a rule this objective world is thought of as the world 
of matter and energy as conceived by physical science. 
(3) He may infer that there is no such non-mental world. 
What the mind directly perceives is by definition mental, 
and therefore we are assured of the existence only of the 
mental. Indeed, the physical is a superfluous hypothesis. 
This doctrine is usually called idealism. When the ques- 
tion is carried still farther and one asks regarding the 
relation of the universe to this mental world which we 
directly experience, at least three possible answers may 
be given, (a) The philosopher may say: "I alone exist, 
for only my mental states are perceived by me and I can 
account for the universe of my experience as literally only 
my experience." This doctrine is called solipsism, (b) He 
may say: "Only minds exist, and the world that I ex- 
perience is but a society of minds whose interaction with 
one another gives me the world of my experience. This 
world is indeed a different world as we examine it comparing 
one man's experience with another's; but none the less it is 
never the lonely creation of one mind but is the creation 
of a group of minds.' ' (c) He may say: "My mind is 



PHENOMENALISM, POSITIVISM, AND IDEALISM 347 

part of a larger mind, a universal mind; and my experience 
and the world revealed in my experience can be explained 
as part of the larger experience of that mind. That is to 
say, there is a world beyond my individual experience but 
not the physical world of the dualist which by definition 
transcends all possible experience, but simply the world 
of a larger experience into which my experience would 
itself grow could it keep on forever in the growth begun 
in childhood and lasting to my present state of partly or- 
ganized experience. In still other words, the universe is 
my experience grown until it has reached the stage or 
limit called a universal and perfect experience. My pres- 
ent experience is of course imperfect, incomplete, and 
partial. Hence I can contrast with my experience another 
experience, an ideal one, one implicit in my imperfect 
experience, the universal, or absolute experience. " 

The statements made thus far in this section would 
probably seem startling or absurd to the intelligent but 
hard-headed man of affairs. He might say, if that is the 
result of philosophical thought the less we have of it the 
better; but in so saying he would do a gross injustice to 
the facts of life and to the part this problem has played 
in the drama of European thought. Even the most hard- 
headed man has to admit the following: — It is a fact that 
each man in some sense or other lives in his own private 
world. Again, it is a fact that in some sense or other the 
world of each man's experience has been socially formed, 
is, in other words, the resultant of the interplay of minds. 
Again, it is a fact that in some sense or other the world 
has kept growing in the mind of the human race, that we 
look forward to further growth toward some, perhaps un- 
imaginable, limit; and that we may in some sense or other 
speak properly of our experience being part of a larger or 
universal experience. Finally, it is a fact that the world 
we talk about most frequently in science is in some sense 



348 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

or other not the world of man's perception. Now as 
students of the history of philosophical thought it is not 
our business to ascertain in what sense these matters are 
facts; but it is our business to note in what sense the in- 
tellectual classes of Europe have tended to believe them 
to be facts and to note the role the resulting philosophical 
dogma has played in the drama of the past three centuries 
of European thought. Let us then turn directly to these 
matters. 

4. Phenomenalism in modern thought. — Common 
sense has remained little concerned with this problem of 
phenomenalism, or subjectivism; but most men have re- 
mained thus unconcerned chiefly because, through long 
racial training, they have socially inherited workable solu- 
tions of the most frequent and pressing problems raised 
by subjectivism. In short, we manage the ordinary affairs 
of daily life so skillfully and unreflectively that we are 
able to ignore the difference between what we call "things" 
or "realities" and "their appearance." 

The steps beyond commonsense were taken, at least 
most prominently, by Descartes and later by John Locke. 
These steps, as we have seen, proceeded from Cartesian 
dualism as an absolute or fixed stepping stone whose im- 
mobility and security were never questioned. These few 
steps brought Descartes and Locke to the position vir- 
tually of Democritus, to a phenomenalism which leaves 
the true nature of the non-mental world to be ascertained 
by scientific research. I believe it can be said without 
question that this has remained to the present day the ac- 
cepted philosophical position of the vast majority of scientific 
men. 

However, it has been easy to take one step more and to 
reach an agnostic phenomenalism, or positivism. As we 
have seen, according to positivism the only world man 
can know is the world of his experience, and the task 



PHENOMENALISM, POSITIVISM, AND IDEALISM 349 

of science is not to reveal a world beyond percep- 
tion but merely to invent a system by means of which 
to organize or to describe the world of experience. 1 
This extreme phenomenalism, agnosticism, or positivism 
commenced to appear prominently in European thought 
in the writings of David Hume and of Immanuel Kant, 
that is, in the middle and latter half of the eighteenth 
century. In the nineteenth century it has been especially 
prominent in Germany, France, and England and is held 
to-day by some of the ablest scientists. 

The next step in the development of subjectivism pro- 
ceeds beyond phenomenalism to idealism. Idealism asserts 
that if the world of experience is mental then all is men- 
tal, for "to be beyond the world of experience " is mean- 
ingless being equivalent to " the unthinkable. " Reality 
is experience, is mental. This famous step in human 
thought was taken by Berkeley and although taken by 
others in his time will perhaps always be associated with 
his name. 2 

1 This organization may be the work of inborn organizing faculties 
in man's intellect, giving man a priori or necessary principles of 
science (a doctrine called transcendentalism); or this organization 
may be based upon the general biological tendencies that lead man to 
adjust himself to environment. In this latter case the principle at 
work is biological utility, or convenience. The famous author of 
transcendentalism was Immanuel Kant. The most noted upholders 
of the latter doctrine have been the contemporary thinkers, Ernst 
Mach, Karl Pearson and Henri Poincare\ 

2 Idealism has been prominent in nineteenth century thought 
though by no means as prominent as phenomenalism. However, it 
has been decidedly influential among philosophers in the narrow 
sense. Of the idealists two important schools deserve to be re- 
membered by every student of the history of philosophy: first, the 
Berkeleian school, especially in England; second, the German ideal- 
ists and their followers, especially in England and America. The in- 
fluence of idealism upon the general intellectual life of Europe since 
the eighteenth century has been decidedly one-sided. It has been 
marked in the fields of political and social science, in ethics and reli- 



350 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

5. The subjectivistic problem of knowledge. — One of 

the most remarkable influences of subjectivism is, as we 
have seen, the belief in the importance of the problem of 
the nature, validity and limits of human knowledge. Even 
Descartes was troubled with the problem, whether or not 
science is possible. As a rationalist his bias in favor of 
science saved him from skepticism, but the modern reader 
can hardly fail to feel that the doctrine of innate ideas is 
a treacherous life raft by which to rescue science from 
the waves of skepticism. Locke, in his immortal book, 
bore witness to how urgent the problem of knowledge 
could become to a good Cartesian of the second generation. 
The chasm left by Cartesian dualism between the knowing 
mind and its object was clearly perceived and Locke was 
perplexed as to how to build a trustworthy bridge to span 
the chasm. If the only objects of direct- knowledge are 
mental states, by what indirect means can man know the 
non-mental object? Kant, another Cartesian, reached the 
conclusion of the matter, the world of things in themselves, 
the world that Descartes and physical scientists had re- 
garded as the true object of their research, is quite un- 
knowable. 

But the important fact is that all Cartesians were forced 
to make the solution of the problem of knowledge the major 
part of their philosophical thought, that they were forced 
to make this problem prior to all other scientific research, 
and that they were forced to drift farther and farther 
away from commonsense and actual scientific methods and 
traditions in reaching the remarkable and perplexing 
solutions which one after another were offered to the world 
by such great Cartesian thinkers as Locke, Berkeley, 
Hume, and Kant. From Locke to the present time the 

gion and in the romantic movement; whereas its influence upon 
mathematical, physical and biological science has been quite negligi- 
ble. 



PHENOMENALISM, POSITIVISM, AND IDEALISM 351 

theory of knowledge has stood in the forefront of Euro- 
pean philosophical thought and has tended to divorce the 
philosophical thinker from those men of scientific research 
who have gone calmly on their way little troubled by the 
difficulties and perplexities of the students of knowledge 
and proving by their remarkable success that science 
can flourish though her nature and her very right to exist 
are causing some men profound anxiety and perplexity. 

For further study read: 

Pearson, K., Grammar of Science, 3d ed., 1911, espec. 

chapters II and III; 
Berkeley, Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous; 
Windelband, History of Philosophy, 466-486; 
Watson, J., Selections from Kant, 1-222; 
Russell, B., Problems of Philosophy (Home University 

Library). 
For more extensive study read: 

Smith, Studies in the Cartesian Philosophy; 

Paulsen, F. (Creighton and Lefevre transl.) Im. Kant, 

His Life and Doctrine, 1910; 
Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding (Calkins' 

selections from); 
Berkeley, Principles of Human Knowledge. 

6. Empiricism and positivism. — With Locke and his 
successors began the important philosophical movement, 
empiricism. As we have seen, it was governed by a careful 
study of the actual content of man's mental states. Such 
an examination led Locke to dispute correctly the presence 
of innate ideas and to express some perplexity regarding 
several of the terms of science, such as substance, energy, 
infinite space and others. In his successor Berkeley the 
revolt against rationalism became open and extreme. 
Berkeley could not find among man's mental states any 
abstract ideas and from this absence of abstract ideas he 
inferred that those terms of science which presuppose such 



352 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

ideas, are meaningless words. Matter robbed of all 
empirical content, such as color, is an abstract and im- 
possible idea and the matter of mechanics is so robbed. 
Empty space and time and infinity are similar abstract 
terms and are also mere words. Therefore abstract me- 
chanics is mere words. Finally, the best known and most 
thoroughgoing positivism, for such this extreme empiri- 
cism had already become, was that of the great English 
thinker David Hume. He agreed quite with Berkeley 
regarding the impossibility of abstract mental states; and 
he submitted some of the fondest notions of rationalism to 
a fatal criticism. These notions were especially those of 
substance and causation. Search the mental states of 
man and nowhere do we find any idea of substance or 
necessary causal connection, or efficacy. An orange we 
can perceive, but rob the orange of all its qualities and the 
remaining substance in which these qualities are said to 
inhere has become, as far as man's ideas are concerned, a 
mere zero. Thus when man uses the word, substance, he 
means no more than the empirical fact that the qualities 
cohere in the visible, tactual and otherwise sensible ob- 
ject. In short, the term substance has no rightful place 
in science and the same may be said of cause. We perceive 
that one event follows another or coexists with another, 
but we never perceive that it has to do so or why it does so. 
No scrutiny of what we actually perceive reveals any other 
connection between events than the empirical fact of 
temporal and spatial contiguity and of similarity and 
difference. From no event can we deduce its consequent. 
Apart from experience the most careful examination of a 
piece of bread would not tell whether or not it will nourish 
or for that matter whether or not it will blow the universe 
to star dust. The wisest man that ever lived could deduce 
nothing merely from bread other than the content as 
perceived. In short, force, energy, causal necessity and all 



PHENOMENALISM, POSITIVISM, AND IDEALISM 353 

rationalistic explanation of what has to be and of why 
things are as they are and do as they do, are mere pseudo- 
science and should be abandoned. All that man can do 
according to Hume's positivism is to describe actual 
experience and live as experience teaches. Man can ex- 
plain nothing. 

For further study read: 

Berkeley, Principles of Human Knowledge, Introduction 
and sections 85-134; 

Hume, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. 
For more extensive study read: 

Mill, J. S., Comte and His Positivism; 

Pearson, K., Grammar of Science; 

Stallo, J. B., Concepts and Theories of Modern Physics, 
1881; 

Nunn, T. P., Aims and Achievements of Scientific Method; 

Hoffding, History of Modern Philosophy, 293-433. 

7. Objective idealism. — With the successors of Kant, 
the nineteenth century idealists, the problem of knowl- 
edge was solved in a radically different way. Idealism, 
rejecting any other than the world of experience, faced 
quite a different problem from that faced by Locke and 
Hume. The question was no longer, how can we tran- 
scend experience and know an extra-mental world? Nor 
was it longer, how are substances and forces to be revealed 
to minds that sense only qualities? Rather it was the 
problem of the mind's own inherent ways of organizing 
man's sensory experiences into the complex world that 
increasing maturity in knowledge brings into existence as 
a matter of fact. For example, the experiences of the 
child are not integrated to any great extent and the child 
can hardly be said to have a world at all. As the child 
grows in experience it grows also in mental organization 
and thus a genuine cosmos arises as the object of its 
knowledge. With further maturity and especially with 



354 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

the maturity which we call man's progress in science, 
generation after generation, the world of experience be- 
comes richer and richer in content and more and more 
organized into a coherent system. Now what the word, 
reality means, is not some external object but the ideal 
goal of this evolution of human experience, not some world 
apart from the mind but the developing mind itself reach- 
ing the limit of its growth in the ideal history of the human 
spirit. 

If we adopt this point of view phenomenalism itself has 
been escaped and the problems raised by Hume are easily 
solved. This idealism is genuinely objective, because there 
are no objects except those of experience and because the 
experience of which we are speaking is not merely the 
experience of the individual man or even the experience of 
the human race but universal experience of which the 
experience of the individual and the race are but important 
historical and finite stages. Thus the experience of which 
the objective idealist speaks is beyond history and man, 
and is superpersonal. As such it escapes with difficulty 
from being a merely mystical entity, from being a symbolic 
formula such as the limit of a mathematical series, or from 
existing merely in the sense mathematical entities can 
rightly be said to exist. However, this limit of evolving 
experiences is reality, the absolute, or the absolute mind 
of the objective idealist. As a theory of knowledge it 
solves all the older problems by making everything im- 
manent in the growing mind and reducing the problem of 
knowledge to that of discovering the inherent (or, what 
certainly looks like, the inborn or instinctive) embryonic 
course of intellectual development from the child to the 
ideal limit of intellectual growth. In short, objective 
idealism reduced the Cartesian problem of knowledge to a 
problem of mental growth. 

Objective idealism had its beginnings in the Critique 



PHENOMENALISM, POSITIVISM, AND IDEALISM 355 

of Pure Reason 1 of Kant and reached virtually its final ex- 
position in the Logic and other writings of Hegel (./Z.1810). 
Since Hegel's time it has become an important movement 
in Great Britain and America. Here again, the historian 
cannot fail to mark the complete divorce between science 
and this lonely and largely academic doctrine. Perhaps 
the future may bring them together but at present this 
movement, large and important as it no doubt is, seems an 
eddy rather than the main current of European philos- 
ophical thought. True a possible exception must be made 
in this statement because of the influence of Hegel and his 
school upon historical study in the nineteenth century; but 
this influence seems to have been outgrown and this much 
to the relief of historical science. In contrast with positiv- 
ism idealism seems to have been less able to win the in- 
tellectual classes and to have played small part in further- 
ing man's scientific enterprise. Rather, it has had its 
influence through the romantic movement of which it was 
a part and to this we shall return in a later chapter. 

For further study read: 

Windelband, History of Philosophy, 529-622; 

Paulsen, Im. Kant, His Life and Doctrine; 

Caird, E., The Critical Philosophy of Kant, espec. chap- 
ter I; 

Hoffding, History of Modern Philosophy, Vol. II, 29-109; 

Royce, J., Spirit of Modern Philosophy, 101-471; 

Watson, Selections from Kant; 

Fichte, Vocation of Man; 

Calkins, M. W., Persistent Problems of Philosophy. 
For more extensive study read: 

Haldane, R. B., Pathway to Reality, 1906; 

Miinsterberg, H., The Eternal Values, 1909; 

Taylor, A. E., Elements of Metaphysics, 1-119; 

Caird, J., Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion. 

1 Published in 1781. 



356 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

8. The influence of phenomenalism and positivism 
upon the intellectual life of the past two centuries. — 

Agnostic phenomenalism and positivism have favored 
both the conservative and the radical religious thinkers. 
On the one hand, it has been argued that if man is limited 
in his knowledge to what he experiences, a knowledge of 
God and of a supersensible world-order is impossible, is 
indeed an idle speculation. On the other hand, it has been 
argued that the older rationalism and its atheism have 
become bankrupt and that now there is room in the 
universe for God, the divine order and revelation. If the 
real, or supersensible world transcends science, science 
certainly can not contradict the hypotheses of religion re- 
garding this supersensible world. After all, this world 
may be what religion claims it to be, and as science has 
admitted her inability to decide, man's heart and con- 
science are left free to judge. In other words, if man's 
heart and conscience demand such a world and if science 
must remain neutral, the victory is won and man can 
again believe in God, freedom, and immortality, or in 
divine revelation. True, he cannot give a rationalistic 
proof of this belief but he can accept the verdict of his 
heart and conscience as final practical postulates. In this 
way the downfall of rationalism led to man's heart and 
conscience arising supreme in the directing of life and 
faith. 1 

In the realm of science the field especially and immedi- 
ately influenced by phenomenalism and positivism was 
that of psychology and social and moral science. Phenom- 
enalism and positivism were powerful factors in the 

1 This position is evidently on the verge of romanticism. Its two 
most prominent representatives in the eighteenth century were 
Berkeley and Kant. Of its many prominent advocates in the nine- 
teenth century Ritschl in Germany and Mansel in England have 
been especially influential among theologians. 






PHENOMENALISM, POSITIVISM, AND IDEALISM 357 

tendencies I have described in the preceding chapter, 
namely, sensationism and associationism. If mental life is 
ultimate, the science of mental life can hardly go beyond 
mental analysis and description. Physiological research 
and explanation can hardly contribute to a science that 
stands logically prior to all other sciences and whose very 
problems are the origin and nature of man's world and 
all its contents. Thus psychology drifted into the dreary 
and elaborate introspective study of mental states and 
their analysis and integration, and remained such a study 
until the doctrine of evolution began to transform psychol- 
ogy again into a biological science. 1 

In conclusion, whatever may have been the specific 
forms taken by subjectivism, subjectivism in general has 
tended during the past two hundred years to weaken con- 
fidence in the reality of the world, in the enterprises of 
man's life and in the principles of morality and religion. 
The world has come to seem to many man-made, or mind- 
made rather than real. Certainly in its extreme forms 
subjectivism has weakened the sense of the reality of 
things to a degree that substitutes hypnotism for science 
or skill. It has emphasized belief rather than reality so that 
some men have come to care more about being confident 
than about being right. Again, it has weakened the sense 
of duty and the authority of the law, by regarding man's 
mind as the maker and remaker of both. The ultimate 
criterion of reality and of the true, the good, and the 
beautiful have become for many thoughtful men merely 
human satisfaction. Among the highly intellectual classes 
subjectivism has certainly tended to make men approach 
the solution of problem after problem from psychological 

1 The influence of phenomenalism and positivism upon moral and 
social science was likewise to further some of the tendencies already 
described. In particular, they favored the growing utilitarianism 
especially of the English political and moral theorists. 



358 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

(and even biological) standpoints when earlier thinkers 
would have chosen other points of departure. In this way- 
it has tended to make art, morality, religion, political 
theory, law, logic and in general philosophy mere branches 
of psychology or even of biology. Indeed, the very basis 
of the universe has been conceived by subjectivism in 
terms of the biological adaptation of man to his environ- 
ment or in terms of human instincts and their satisfaction. 



CHAPTER XXV 

THE DOCTRINE OP EVOLUTION 

1. Introductory. — The seventeenth and eighteenth 
centuries witnessed, as we have seen, the rise of modern 
intellectualism and its subordinate philosophical move- 
ments, mechanistic naturalism, rationalism, phenomenal- 
ism, positivism, and idealism. The nineteenth century in 
turn witnessed the rise of the doctrine of evolution and of 
the romantic reaction against intellectualism. On the 
one hand, the doctrine of evolution extended the older 
intellectualism by adding to it new philosophical interests, 
problems and hypotheses of highest importance. On the 
other hand, romanticism liberated the life of feeling and 
emotion suppressed during the age of reason. Let us 
consider first the rise of the former doctrine, the theory of 
evolution. 

The rapidly growing knowledge of the eighteenth cen- 
tury forced upon the attention of scientists more and more 
imperatively the problem of the origin of man's world, that 
is the origin of the solar system, the origin of the earth and 
her present surface, the origin of life and its innumerable 
forms, the origin of man, of his mind and of his civilization. 
Thus from the late eighteenth century to our own time the 
following questions commenced one after the other to 
concern the intellectual world. How did the solar and 
sidereal systems arise? How did the crust of the earth 
reach its present structure and character? Whence arose 
the species of animals and plants? What was the origin of 
man and what has been the origin of his customs, laws, 

359 



$ 

360 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

institutions, arts and beliefs? If naturalism was to be a 
consistent and adequate philosophical conception of the 
world, it had to include an account of the rise of all these 
things and it had to explain this rise by naturalistic prem- 
ises. Still here as elsewhere thought moved slowly and by 
stages. Only slowly could the new naturalism expand into 
fields still occupied by traditional and prescientific belief 
and only gradually could it recognize the presence of the 
many problems of origin and development implicit in its 
very earliest subjects of research. 

The first definite attempt to explain the origin of any of 
these entities by appealing to the results of genuinely 
scientific research was, as we should expect, in the most 
advanced science of the day, namely, in gravitational 
astronomy. Kant and Laplace share the honor of offering 
to the world the nebular hypothesis, a distinctly nat- 
uralistic effort to explain in the terms of mechanics instead 
of the terms of supernaturalism the origin of our solar 
system. 1 

At the same time the increasing knowledge of the sur- 
face of the earth, of its strata, and of the fossils contained 
in them were forcing geologists to attend to the problem of 
the historical origin of the earth's present surface and of the 
animal and plant life it supports. The same problem 
forced itself upon the attention also of zoologists and 
botanists. In short, in the late eighteenth and early 
nineteenth centuries the problem had become pressing 
because of the vast store of geological and biological in- 
formation that could not be adequately systematized and 
explained by the prescientific and traditional theories of 
creation. 

Finally, in the early nineteenth century, an increasing 

1 It is interesting to notice, however, that this same thinker Kant 
despaired of science ever being able to account naturalistically for 
the rise of plant and animal life. 



THE DOCTRINE OF EVOLUTION 361 

interest developed in all that we call the history of man. 
The older intellectualism had turned men to the study and 
imitation of classical art and literature; but now the dawn- 
ing romanticism turned men to the study of the middle 
ages, and of the folklore and folk customs of northern 
Europe. A far better acquaintance with the eastern 
peoples, their customs and arts, their literature and 
religion, and especially with the civilization of India was 
also awakening an interest in the origin and development 
of language, literature, art, and religion. Finally, political 
and social history and science were becoming mere evolu- 
tionary in the problems they raised and in the subject- 
matter they studied. Thus, from astronomy to the 
sciences of society and civilization a growing interest 
developed in the problems of genesis and origin. 

For further study read: 

Royce, Spirit of Modern Philosophy, 273-304; 
Merz, J. T., History of European Thought in the Nine- 
teenth Century, Vol. II, chapter IX. 

2. Geological and biological evolution. — Of these 
fields of research that of geology and biology was stra- 
tegically the most important, for here the rise of the doc- 
trine of evolution was to modify radically the philosophical 
thought of Europe and America. The strategical impor- 
tance of this field is easily explained if we recall that it 
included most of what both prescientific and even intel- 
lectual men have in mind when they speak of creation; 
that is, it included the development of the earth as the 
habitat of man, beast and plant, the development of life 
upon the earth and finally the origin and prehistory of 
man himself. Thus it included the great arena in which 
religion in all the ages has found especially the combat 
between the forces of good and evil and the consummation 
of the divine drama. Finally, the field of geological and 



362 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

biological evolution included the most conservative sur- 
vivals of prescientific belief, and therefore the field into 
which the naturalism of the preceding two centuries had 
hardly penetrated. Here, in other words, the great body 
of European thought and belief still remained prescientific. 

The rise of the doctrine of evolution in geology and biol- 
ogy is associated pre-eminently with the names of Lyell and 
Darwin, though these thinkers were of course but leaders 
in a movement older than they and in a movement steadily 
advancing in the direction in which they were to hasten 
its progress. However, the vast influence of the two books, 
LyelPs Principles of Geology (1830-33) and Darwin's Origin 
of Species (1859) is more easily underestimated than over- 
estimated; for they were philosophically the most impor- 
tant books written in the nineteenth century. Before 
their years of publication few men were evolutionists and 
fewer men were evolutionists in many fields; whereas by 
the end of the nineteenth century the entire intellectual 
world had become evolutionistic, and evolutionistic not 
merely in geology and biology but in every field of his- 
torical research and in every field of deliberative effort to 
advance civilization. Indeed, to view all things from an 
evolutionistic standpoint has become virtually an element 
of commonsense. 

But what constituted the philosophical advance made 
by these great books? First, they extended naturalism to 
fields that up to the time of the appearance of these books 
were the most difficult for man to conceive in naturalistic 
terms and that therefore man had continued to conceive 
in supernaturalistic terms. Now " natural " means capable 
of scientific explanation and so the preceding statement 
may be re-expressed thus: these books enlarged the field 
of scientific explanation to include the origin of the world 
which forms man's immediate habitat and the origin of 
man and his civilization. Thus they taught men to think 



THE DOCTRINE OF EVOLUTION 363 

of themselves, body, life and mind and of their civilization 
and of all that it includes as genuinely natural, natural in 
origin, natural in development and natural in destiny. 
They taught men that man's world is as truly a part of 
nature as is the system of mechanical forces exemplified 
in the solar system. Second, they taught men that the 
processes now actually observable in nature can account 
for origins which previously seemed to require radically 
different processes, if not even supernatural processes. 
The same erosion now observable in nature, if given time, 
can level mountains from whose debris in turn vast de- 
posits can be built. The very pressures now observable 
can create mountains and make faults and earthquakes. 
The variations in species actually observable and the 
observable survival of the fittest enabling these fittest to 
procreate the next generation can account for the origin of 
new species from the old, can account for the dying out of 
types of animal and plant and can account for the innu- 
merable variety of types to which an earlier type can ulti- 
mately give rise. Third, these books opened the eyes of 
men to the complete genetic continuity in nature. This 
continuity had been long taught in the abstract by nat- 
uralistic thinkers but here it was given in the concrete and 
exemplified where least expected. Now genetic continuity 
became explicitly the object of search in every science 
which dealt with the origin and development of anything 
whatsoever, be it a mountain or a part of a mountain, be 
it a genus or a specific animal's body or a part of his body, 
be it a language or a word in a language, be it a civilization 
or a custom within a civilization, be it a religion or a 
specific rite or belief in that religion, be it a government or 
a specific institution within that government, the common 
law or a specific decision in the history of the law, architec- 
ture or a specific building, the drama or a play of Shake- 
speare. All now were studied with the expectation of 



364 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

finding a genetic continuity between what is and what has 
been. 

Of course, Lyell and Darwin left to the next generation 
of scientists vastly more problems than they themselves 
solved, and they left solutions which may one and all in 
the long run prove erroneous; but what they did leave 
settled was the progress of naturalism. Naturalism may 
or may not be a sound philosophy, that is a matter which 
history can decide but not the historian. Our point is 
solely that from these days naturalism thoroughly under- 
stood her own ambition, saw what might be expected of 
her and viewed the future with confidence. Moreover, 
naturalism was now in a position really to win the intel- 
lectual world and to convince intellectual men that the 
world about them and they themselves are genuinely the 
proper objects of scientific explanation. 

3. The doctrine of natural selection. — To this account 
of the bearing of geological and biological evolution upon 
the more general doctrine of naturalism we must add a 
brief statement of Darwin's doctrine of natural selection; 
for it has played not merely the part of a special biological 
hypothesis but also the part of a general, or philosophical 
hypothesis. The biological doctrine of natural selection 
may be stated thus: To reach maturity and to be able to 
leave offspring any living creature must meet those condi- 
tions of its environment which not to meet would mean its 
death. It must secure the indispensable food, it must 
escape its enemies and it must protect itself against all 
other death-causing agents, living or lifeless. Now no 
such perfect adjustment between organisms and their 
environment obtains that the aforementioned conditions 
cease to be a serious matter; rather all species have a high 
death rate before maturity and in most species this death 
rate is enormous. Hence in most species the individual 
that survives long enough to leave offspring is highly 



THE DOCTRINE OF EVOLUTION 365 

exceptional. As special evidence of this fact consider that 
all species tend to reproduce their kind far beyond the 
available food supply and even far beyond the available 
area of the habitat. Consider, for example, the rate of 
reproduction in such types as the insects, the fish, or the 
bacteria or the fruit trees in which in a few generations the 
mathematically possible offspring from one seed, spore or 
ovum would be millions in number. Consider in contrast 
the fact that the actual number of plants or animals in 
any habitat is usually all but constant. These two facts 
can be harmonized only by the hypothesis that very few 
ova or seeds develop into fully mature creatures. The 
number perishing between the first stage of life and the 
mature stage must be enormous. That is to say, the 
conditions of the environment, or nature, selects out of 
any generation the few that are to survive and leave off- 
spring. But which are thus selected? The correct reply 
is the truism: Those best adjusted to the environment, 
those most fitted to the actual conditions, however acci- 
dental these conditions may be. If then any exceptional 
trait is possessed by part of any species, a mutation, for 
example, that gives the individuals possessing it an im- 
portant handicap fitting them better than their fellows to 
the specific conditions of the environment; then the 
chances are highly in favor of the few who do survive, 
including some of these with the valuable new trait. 
Hence, finally, wherever a valuable trait does arise, other 
things being equal, it survives to the next generation; and 
in time only those possessing this trait do survive. In 
short, the old species has disappeared and a new variety 
has taken its place. 

Whether or not this doctrine of natural selection can 
explain all that the biologists of Darwin's generation 
thought it could, is in no way my question. What I wish 
to point out is the fact that this doctrine became rapidly 



366 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

generalized and then widely used in the sciences. Gen- 
eralized the doctrine of natural selection asserts: Of the 
innumerable entities which come into existence some are 
so favorably adapted to the conditions of their further 
survival that they persist and tend to become typical; 
whereas others not favorably adapted perish and fail to 
become typical. Now we have in the doctrine of natural 
selection thus generalized a principle that applies to in- 
numerable entities which form part of human history. 
For example, it applies to all customs and beliefs, to tools 
and machines, to words and idioms, to architecture and 
art, to types of literature and literary style, to laws and 
institutions, to scientific theories and principles, to re- 
ligious rites and dogmas, to methods of commerce, indus- 
try and banking, to forms of dress and adornment, to 
methods of education and to professional callings and to 
the innumerable other arts, customs and institutions that 
constitute the life and the culture of a people. Similarly 
it applies to the development of habit in the individual 
mind. The habits of any adult are the resultant of a 
natural selection taking place from childhood. On the 
one hand, this process eliminates response after response 
that does not lead to satisfaction or does lead to annoy- 
ance; and on the other hand, it allows to survive as habits 
those responses that are satisfying. For example, that 
you and I speak English and not some jungle dialect is 
due to such a natural selection, that we have the etiquette 
and morals of civilized whites and not of wild people is 
again due to this factor, and finally, that we think more or 
less logically and not altogether hysterically or childishly 
is likewise the result of this same process of selection. 
Moreover, not only can the survival of entities that are 
peculiarly human or biological be thought of in terms of 
natural selection, but also the survival of solar systems and 
chemical atoms and chemical molecules and compounds. 



THE DOCTRINE OF EVOLUTION 367 

In short, any structure, chemical or physical, is an equilib- 
rium of forces depending upon environmental conditions 
and its adaptation to those conditions for its survival. 
However, it is chiefly in the biological, the psychological 
and the social, the political, the economic, the moral and, 
in general, all historical sciences that the doctrine of 
selection has become an important philosophical principle. 

For further study read: 

Judd, J. W., The Coming of Evolution, 1910; 

Thomson and Geddes, Evolution (Home University Li- 
brary); 

Romanes, G. J., Darwin and after Darwin, 1901, Vol. I; 

Merz, J. T., History of European Thought in the Nineteenth 
Century, Vol. II, chapter IX. 
For more extensive study read: 

Osborn, H. F., From the Greeks to Darwin; 

Darwin, Origin of Species. 

4. Evolution as a part of the philosophy of the intellec- 
tual world. — The winning of the intellectual world to 
evolution was not without a fierce struggle comparable to 
the struggle that centered about Galilei. But to-day this 
struggle is happily over. Evolution is an integral part of 
our habits of thought almost as much as are the multiplica- 
tion tables; for we are literally evolutionists in every 
branch of historical study and are so as a matter of course. 
The sciences of geology, biology, psychology, sociology, 
anthropology, philology, political history, the history of 
art, of literature, of religion, of law and social institutions 
are one and all evolutionistic and have become such during 
the fifty or sixty years since the publication of the Origin of 
Species. 

For further study read: 

Hoffding, History of Modern Philosophy, 434-485. 



368 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

For more extensive study read: 

Spencer, H., First Principles; 
Fifty Years of Darwinism, 1909. 

5. The influence of evolution upon the general trend 
of present philosophic thought. — With the years imme- 
diately succeeding the publication of the Origin of Species 
we enter the period reserved for a later chapter of this 
book; however, let us notice here one highly general 
philosophical influence of Darwin. 

Modern experimentalism really began, as we have seen, 
with Galilei; but experimentalism made its way only 
slowly from field to field and did not reach the goal of being 
a general philosophy until our own time. Here Darwin has 
certainly helped more than any other man. Directly or 
indirectly he has taught the succeeding generations that 
the entire intellectual enterprise of man is itself an evolving 
and therefore tentative or an experimental undertaking. 
Rationalism with its fixed axioms and its optimism re- 
garding man's ability to reach quickly the goal of any 
science or the final solution of any problem seems to most 
intellectual men of to-day absurdly presumptuous. We 
feel our way onward distrustful of utopianism or finality 
in any form or guise, be it final scientific hypotheses or 
final moral codes or final political theories or final ideals of 
art or literature or final theologies. In short, the philos- 
ophy of our intellectual life and of our moral and practical 
life is filled with the spirit of trial and error, of struggle for 
existence, and of survival of the fittest, that is, of evolution 
by natural selection. 

For further study read: 

Dewey, J., The Influence of Darwin upon Philosophy, 1910, 
Chapter I. 



CHAPTER XXVI 

KOMANTICISM 

1. Introductory. — Thus far in the history of modern 
philosophy we have studied the several tendencies within 
the intellectualistic movement. We have now to study the 
anti-intellectualistic, or romantic movement which arose 
in reaction against intellectualism. 

Not only did the rise of modern science fail to eliminate a 
large part of prescientific belief and custom but it failed 
also to suppress completely medieval religion, emo- 
tion and art. True, these latter remained somewhat in 
the background during two or more centuries, while the 
new and powerful tendencies in European thought played 
their part. As we have seen, in the seventeenth and eight- 
eenth centuries classicism in art and literature, naturalism 
in science, and rationalism in religion were prominent in 
the intellectual life of Europe; but the eighteenth century 
witnessed also a revival of the spirit of the medieval north- 
ern peoples. This change appeared first in the revival of 
emotional religion, in the pietist movement in Germany 
and the methodist movement in England. These religious 
movements were reactions against the cold rationalism and 
formalism of the older protestant churches; and char- 
acteristically they demanded of men a deep emotional 
religious experience and appealed not to man's intellect 
but to his heart and religious intuition; and characteristic- 
ally, they succeeded first among the folk rather than 
among the intellectual classes. Late in the eighteenth 
century and early in the nineteenth romanticism began to 

369 



370 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

appear also in literature and in the revival of interest in 
the folk customs, ballads and legends. Again, it appeared 
in the revival of interest in the middle ages and in Catholi- 
cism. Finally, it appeared in a new interest in the Orient, 
her religion, her thought, her languages and literature. 1 

2. Romanticism as a philosophical movement: (a) 
Rousseau. — In the French writer Rousseau romanticism 
began to appear as an explicit philosophical movement, 
which fact together with Rousseau's widespread and 
powerful influence upon European thought makes him 
one of the most important of modern thinkers. Briefly 
stated, the important philosophical principle maintained 
by Rousseau was: "Morality and religion are not matters 
of reasoned thinking, but of natural feeling. Man's worth 
depends not on his intelligence, but on his moral nature, 
which consists essentially of feeling; the good will alone has 
absolute value." That is to say, the sentiments are the 
important element in our mental life, and it is not through 
the development of intelligence that man becomes per- 
fect but through the development of feeling; for the ideal 
man is he that is filled with sympathy for his fellows and is 
"inspired by religious feeling, gratitude, and reverence." 

(b) Kant, Fichte and their successors.— Influenced by 
Rousseau, Kant and Fichte expressed the same principle. 

1 Some familiar nineteenth century examples of the new movement 
are the following:— the interest that led the brothers Grimm to col- 
lect the fairy tales of the German peasantry; the romances of Walter 
Scott; the poetry of Wordsworth, Coleridge and Keats; the Oxford 
movement in the Church of England toward medieval Catholicism 
under the leadership of the great English thinker and writer John 
Henry Newman and his associates; the revival of gothic architecture 
in England and America reacting against the classical architecture of 
the eighteenth century; and finally, especially in Germany, new 
interest in the study of the historical development of language and 
in general the rapidly rising interest in historical research of every 
kind. 

2 Quoted from Thilly, History of Philosophy, p. 389. 






ROMANTICISM 371 

In Kant's words: — "Nothing in the whole world, or even 
outside of the world, can possibly be regarded as good 
without limitation except a good will. No doubt it is a 
good and desirable thing to have intelligence, sagacity, 
judgment, and other intellectual gifts, by whatever name 
they may be called; it is also good and desirable in many 
respects to possess by nature such qualities as courage, 
resolution, and perseverance; but all these gifts of nature 
may be in the highest degree pernicious and hurtful, if 
the will which directs them or what is called the character, 
is not itself good. The same thing applies to gifts of for- 
tune. Power, wealth, honor, even good health, and that 
general well-being and contentment with one's lot which 
we call happiness, give rise to pride and not infrequently to 
insolence, if a man's will is not good; nor can a reflective 
and impartial spectator ever look with satisfaction upon 
the unbroken prosperity of a man who is destitute of the 
ornament of a pure and good will. A good will would 
therefore seem to be the indispensable condition without 
which no one is even worthy to be happy. 

"A man's will is good, not because the consequences 
which flow from it are good, nor because it is capable of 
attaining the end which it seeks, but it is good in itself, or 
because it wills the good. By a good will is not meant mere 
well-wishing; it consists in a resolute employment of all 
the means within one's reach, and its intrinsic value is in 
no way increased by success or lessened by failure." l 

With Kant and Rousseau Fichte asserted the primacy of 
the will, and adopting an outright idealism he found in the 
will struggling for the good the very central fact of the 
universe. The universe is an eternal struggle for right- 
eousness and by so viewing it man can comprehend the 
very essence of all things. 

Among the successors of Kant and Fichte in the move- 
1 Watson, Selections from Kant, pp. 225 f . 



372 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

ment called German idealism the greatest romanticist 
was Schopenhauer. Schopenhauer taught that the will, 
or the instinctive and impulsive nature exhibited in our 
human minds reveals the very essence of the universe 
and of all its processes and contents. From the inanimate 
up through plant and animal to man we behold every- 
where the blind struggle to exist and to take on character- 
istic forms. In the vastly greater part of nature this 
will is blind, but in man it becomes self-conscious. Thus 
every event, or transformation in nature, man or society, 
is interpreted as the striving of the will. It may be a 
magnetized needle pointing north, or a tree sending its 
roots deeper into the soil, the beast of prey seeking his 
game, man struggling for fame, or society warring for 
empire, one and all are but the acts of the primordial will, 
the very stuff of which the universe is made. 

This will to live and to transform is capable of both an 
optimistic and pessimistic interpretation. Kant and 
Fichte had given the optimistic interpretation; whereas 
Schopenhauer is the famous apostle of the pessimistic 
interpretation: — "The will to be, the will to live, is the 
cause of all struggle, sorrow, and evil in the world." It 
is the cause of the ceaseless competition for life between 
one thing and another. It is the cause that makes life 
selfish. "The life of most men is but a continuous struggle 
for existence, — a struggle which they are bound to lose 
at last. . . . Death must conquer after all." In such a 
world true morality teaches as the supreme virtues, sym- 
pathy and pity. Man must suppress his will, his selfish 
desires, "in order to enjoy happiness or at least to be at 
peace. This is possible in several ways. The artistic or 
philosophical genius may be delivered from the selfish 
will, forget himself, lose himself in artistic contemplation 
or philosophical thought. . . . The individual can also 
free himself from his selfish will by contemplating the 



ROMANTICISM 373 

futility of all desire and the illusoriness of individual exist- 
ence. . . . The best way is total negation of the will 
in an ascetic life, such as is practised by Christian ascetics 
and Buddhist saints. Resignation and will-lessness ensue, 
the will is dead." * 

While romanticism spread to Germany through the 
influence especially of Rousseau's writings and while it 
continued there to inspire the German idealism, it was 
spreading also in France and from France and Germany to 
England. Thus by the early nineteenth century it had 
become a distinct trend in European thought. 2 

3. Romanticism as a philosophical doctrine. — Behind 
romanticism as a philosophy are two principles. First, 
man is not fundamentally intellectual. Rather he is 
fundamentally a creature with instincts and feelings; 
and his instinctive and emotional life should dominate 
his career and give him the principles of both his concep- 
tion of the world and his conception of life. Expressed 
in other words, the poet or the saint is a truer and better 
guide in the great enterprise of human life and thought 
than is the scientist. Religion, morals, art, literature, 
social and political philosophy, and education should 
recognize this fundamental fact of human nature. Re- 
ligion is not a sort of mathematics or chemistry to be 

1 Thilly, History of Philosophy, p. 490. 

2 Among the prominent earlier thinkers allied to the Romantic 
movement were the following: Rousseau (fl. c. 1750); Kant (fl. c. 
1765); Jacobi (fl. c. 1785); Fichte (fl. c. 1800); ScheUing (fl. c. 1815); 
Hegel (fl. c. 1810); Schleiermacher (fl. c. 1810); and Schopenhauer 
(fl. c. 1830). The great leaders of early Romanticism in German 
literature were Herder, Goethe and Schiller. Among early French 
and English literary romanticists were: Bishop Percy (whose "Be- 
liques of Ancient English Poetry, published in 1765, has justly been 
described as 'the Bible of the Romantic reformation'"), St. Martin 
(in religion), Madame de Stael, Chateaubriand, Lamartine, Lamen- 
nais, Hugo, Gautier, Cowper, Blake, Burns, Walter Scott, Words- 
worth, Coleridge, Lamb, Keats and Shelley. 



374 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

proved and taught by argument and evidence. Rather 
it is a matter of the heart to be believed because religious 
intuition finds it true and to be accepted as the controller 
of men's lives because their hearts have been won over to 
it as the greatest and most satisfying adventure upon 
which can man enter. Theology and dogmas, formal 
religion and its institutions contradict the true spirit 
of religion and even rob the religious life of its true inward- 
ness. True religion and undefiled can dwell in the simplest 
life and in the humblest of intellects and expresses itself 
in the good will, in the life of gentleness, faith, courage and 
sweetness, in devotion and self-sacrifice, in love and in 
other worldliness and in the contemplation of the divine. 
Morality again is not a science but is essentially the good 
will and conscientiousness. The humblest man intellec- 
tually is as capable of being good as is the wisest. In art 
romanticism expresses itself in a disregard of form and in 
a richness and exuberance of feeling and sentiment. It 
loves nature rather than cities and culture, exalts the 
sentiments of the lover and the picturesque life of the 
peasant and the lowly, is interested in adventure and self- 
sacrifice and is filled with a sense of the mystery of life 
and reality. The same traits characterize its poetry and 
other literature. In its political theory it sees not in man's 
social life a contract or a cold-blooded enterprise governed 
by self-interest and intellect. Rather it beholds in society 
a vast organism in which all men are members one of 
another, an organism governed by its instinctive ideals 
and pressing onward toward their realization without 
seeing explicitly and concretely what these ideals are. 
In education it refuses to regard the child's mind as an 
empty tablet on which civilization is to write its artificial 
and arbitrary lessons. Instead, the child's mind is an 
unfolding mind with its own natural course of develop- 
ment and its education should not be forced on it from 



ROMANTICISM 375 

without but should be governed by the child's own native 
impulses and interests. The child has its own rights, 
its rights to be a person self-directed and self-instructed; 
and these rights are prior to those of artificial culture. 
Finally, to romanticism the real world is not the world of 
atoms and scientific abstractions but a world full of life, 
overflowing with life and with feeling, a world seen and felt 
by man's heart but hidden from man's scientific research. 

Second, behind romanticism is the dawning and later 
the explicit recognition of evolution everywhere in nature 
and in the life of man. The world and the living creature 
are not machines or mathematical puzzles but growing 
entities. Life is therefore a truer and philosophically a 
more genuinely fundamental principle than is the mathe- 
matical and mechanical. Better as a philosophical notion 
even than life is mind with its instincts, or the will in the 
broad sense that includes the instinctive impulses. The 
world is not scientific, rational or logical. Whatever the 
place and value of science, it is false if taken literally as a 
description of the real. The world cannot be described 
in terms of concepts; rather it can only be intuited and 
felt. Thus perceived it is an evolving will, a will driven 
onward by its own impulses, a will struggling to realize 
its own blind yearnings, a will infinitely rich in the variety 
and profusion of its creations. The same will is seen in 
man and his career. Man's history also is the evolution 
of a will, a will that is blind and instinctive, a will governed 
not by foresight but by longing. Thus human history is 
a mighty onward movement whose goal cannot be fore- 
seen or even wisely directed by man's intellect. Whither 
it goes we cannot foretell. The best we can do is to see 
whence it comes, and to do this we must study the in- 
stincts and the heart of man. 1 

1 This extreme anti-intellectualism has not been shared by all 
romanticists. Evolution has its formula. The famous instance of 



376 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

For further study read: 

Royce, Spirit of Modern Philosophy, 164-189; 

Watson, Selections from Kant, 225-258; 

Fichte, Vocation of Man; 

Hoffding, History of Modern Philosophy, Vol. II, 139-289; 

Morley, Essay on Rousseau. 
For more extensive study read: 

Schopenhaur (transl. Haldane and Kemp), World as Will 
and Idea; 

Whittaker, T., Schopenhaur, 1909; 

Wallace, W., Life of Schopenhaur; 

Benn, History of English Rationalism in the Nineteenth 
Century. 

belief in such a formula is the doctrine of the great German philos- 
opher Hegel and of his school. The universal formula of evolution, 
according to Hegel, is the same as that of the evolving individual 
reason. That is to say, all things in nature and in human society 
exhibit in their evolution the same succession of stages as does the 
child's intellect developing into the intellect of the mature and wisest 
philosopher. By discovering therefore this formula the philosopher 
becomes a universal scientist, for he has discovered the most im- 
portant secret of the universe, its very essence and law, a law ex- 
hibited in the development of everything. What is according to the 
Hegelian the law of the developing reason? The chief characteristic 
of the child's knowledge is its one-sidedness. It fails quite to see the 
complexity of any problem it tries to solve and therefore reaches 
absurdly simple solutions. As its knowledge increases it sees some 
of the other sides of these problems, the contradictory aspects, that 
is, contradictory to the aspect first seen. The child may now make 
the error of being one-sided by favoring its new discovery and may 
solve its original problem by going to the opposite extreme. How- 
ever, if the child continues to grow in wisdom it will see many sides to 
the complex matter in which it is interested and will gain a view that 
is itself many-sided. It will get solutions to its problems which 
harmonize or synthesize the many aspects of the things studied. 
Stated as a formula, intellectual development is a passing from one- 
sided beliefs to beliefs that are many-sided, to beliefs that give co- 
herent, synthetic or all inclusive insight; and the final goal of in- 
tellectual development, the perfect intellect, is the completely 
coherent and all inclusive knower, the knower who takes all things or 



ROMANTICISM 377 

4. Romanticism and science. — As romanticism in 
other periods of human history reacted against science and 
naturalism; so has nineteenth century romanticism. 
Romanticism brings the general charge against science 
that it has robbed man of his spiritual life, that it has 

aspects into consideration, who is perfectly consistent, or coherent, 
who sees the world in its infinite complexity yet sees it as a unity, as a 
perfectly coherent system, as an organic unity including infinite 
diversity. 

Correspondingly all evolution proceeds in one direction only to 
take later the opposite direction and finally to combine and reconcile 
the two tendencies. In short, evolution is a harmony of discords, is a 
synthesis of opposites. Nature and life and society never move in 
straight lines. If they did they would remain simple; but they gain 
the complexity and rich variety which they always exhibit by the 
fact that they are constantly moving in opposite directions, then 
harmonizing these opposites only at the next stage to create opposites 
again and so on until infinite diversity harmonized in unity is reached 
in the universe's ideal goal. 

This formula is not merely that of existence but also that of the 
Hegelian's whole system of values, his formulas of the good and the 
beautiful. Perfection means unified diversity, the complete recon- 
ciliation of opposites. The good life is not the simple life but the 
life that has a wealth of diversity and also harmony, consistency or 
coherence. Moreover, as the very law of universal evolution is a 
passing from a lower stage toward the perfect, the Hegelian is a 
thorough optimist. The world itself is good and beautiful and per- 
fect, all evil is finally reconciled and made good in the ultimate unity 
of all things, all discord and ugliness and imperfection disappear as 
our knowledge goes on from stage to stage and we see things co- 
herently. Thus if the world seems evil, it seems so only because we 
are still children with one-sided knowledge, for were our knowledge 
perfect all would be seen to be perfect. 

Here arises in Hegelianism the usual distinction made by mysticism 
between the world as it seems and as it really is. The world that we 
see with our childish eyes is mere appearance. In order to see the 
true world, reality, we have to become philosophers. In short, this 
particular type of romanticism, like the mysticism of the middle 
ages and of Hellenism, ends by giving us the heavenly vision, the 
vision of the world not as it appears to sense or to science but as it 
appears to some super-rational faculty. 



378 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

impoverished his emotional life, that it has transformed 
his religion into atheism or a mere formalism, that it has 
deprived his art of beauty or has put utility in the place 
of beauty, and finally that it has utterly deceived man 
by giving him a merely artificial abstract scheme called 
science and by identifying this abstraction with reality. 
This last charge is the most serious philosophically, for 
naturalism claims at least a firm grasp upon fact and 
reality. Briefly stated, the grounds of the charge made 
against science as a theory of reality are these: Science 
employs as her chief methods analysis and abstraction, 
whereas reality is organic or concrete and in either case 
defies analysis. 

As organic, reality defies scientific analysis, formal 
logic and the type of explanation that presupposes these. 
Reality is an organic unity. It is not a whole made up of 
parts. The parts are not related to one another externally 
but internally. Each is genuinely a member of the other 
and is what it is because of the others. As our hand can- 
not exist without the rest of the body and as our hand is 
what it is because of its relation to the whole body; so 
every part of reality is what it is and even exists only 
because of its membership in the whole. In other words, 
reality can be understood only in its entirety. Let me 
repeat, reality is a unity. The so-called unity of the 
special sciences is a mere mechanical unity not a genuine 
unity, rather it is a mere assemblage of parts any one of 
which could be different without forcing the other parts 
to change. The genuine unity is organic and as such has 
to be viewed from the standpoint of the whole. Thus, 
however valuable science may be as a utilitarian instru- 
ment, it essentially belies the very nature of reality if 
used as a theory of reality. Science analyzes, science 
deduces, science is abstract; whereas reality is essentially 
unanalyzable, reality can be understood only as a whole, 



ROMANTICISM 379 

reality is concrete. Such is the typical Hegelian protest 
against the special sciences taken realistically. 

Another typical protest of contemporary romanticism * 
against science is that science reduces the world to the 
static and abstract world of mathematics. The funda- 
mental notions of science are logical and static and her 
formulae are true only of a static mathematical world; 
whereas reality is alogical and dynamic. Science is funda- 
mentally not evolutionistic but mechanistic; for science 
seeks to explain and to explain is to deduce and to deduce 
is to assume that the premises are sufficient and this finally 
is to assume with mechanics that the future is but a 
changed configuration of the past. In contrast, reality 
is fruitful, is spontaneously bringing into existence the 
absolutely new and is essentially inexplicable. 

Science is logical and static. Science seeks entities that 
do not change, science seeks constant laws, science seeks 
to eliminate every change except that of motion, and 
science seeks to reduce every problem to one in mathe- 
matics. In short, science is mathematical, but reality is 
distinctly non-mathematical. Qualities, intensities, du- 
rations, the good and the beautiful, life and growth, change 
and development defy mathematics. They defy even 
measurement. 2 

1 The Hegelian protest is still partly intellectualistic whereas this 
protest is frankly anti-intellectualistic. As such it is more closely 
related to the thought of Schopenhauer than to that of Hegel and has 
received its most powerful and thorough presentation in the writings 
of the noted contemporary philosopher Bergson. 

2 When we pretend to measure any of these entities, we always 
substitute for it first a mathematical entity. For example, when we 
measure time, we substitute the spatial, as the arc of the heavens 
through which the sun has moved. Pure time is not motion through 
space and simply cannot be measured. Take another instance. We 
pretend to measure temperature by means of a thermometer, but 
what the thermometer really measures is the length of a column of 
mercury; and even though this length is related to temperature, the 



380 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

Science is not evolutionistic, whereas reality is. The 
so-called evolution of science reduces merely to the chang- 
ing position of ultimately constant entities as is quite 
apparent in celestial mechanics. Genuine evolution means 
a budding, a bringing forth, a creation, the arising of the 
new, the onward rush of impulse and history. To say 
that there is no such evolution is to deny our most intimate 
experiences, is to deny the self-evident. As we ourselves 
live and grow, as we think and strive, as we are driven 
by impulse and desire, we experience the very essence 
of the real, a reality that defies mechanical explanation. 

For more extensive study read: 

Bergson, H. (transl. Mitchell), Creative Evolution, 1911; 
Bergson, H. (transl. Pogson), Time and Free Will, 1910; 
Bergson, H. (transl. Hulme), Introduction to Metaphysics, 

1903; 
Joachim, H. H., The Nature of Truth, 1906. 

5. Romanticism and primitive thought. — Romanticism, 
in contrast with intellectualism, has a marked respect for 
the folk mind and the group mind. It believes in the 
heart of man, in the intuitions of the peasant and in the 
instincts and the total mind of the human being. All of 
man's nature is to be satisfied and man is more than in- 
tellect. This makes romanticism not only fond of the 
natural and primitive but also confident of their right to 
be and of their right to rule, and not only reverent toward 
the religion of the folk but also credulous of the innate 
wisdom and correctness of the group mind. It is thus 
socialistic and not individualistic as is intellectualism. 
Even civilization, so admired by intellectualism, is dis- 
trusted as artificial by the romanticist. In the language 
of a true romanticist, George Tyrrell, civilization is a 

relation defies being reduced to any mathematical formula and thus 
the temperature always escapes being measured. 



ROMANTICISM 881 

clearing in the jungle or an artificial garden. It can exist 
as long as we are able to keep the weeds under control; 
but if we neglect our garden for a month and return we 
shall see that it is overgrown with weeds. Moreover, in 
the long run the jungle will conquer in spite of man's 
intellect, care and labor. In this figure, the world is the 
jungle, primitive man is the jungle, the instinctive nature 
of each of us is the jungle; whereas man's intellectual enter- 
prise is the clearing or artificial garden. Let us then recog- 
nize not only the hopelessness of the struggle to make man 
thoroughly intellectual but the absurdity, error and blind- 
ness of trying. For example, take religion. Religion is 
the product of the group mind. Religion came out of the 
jungle. It cannot be made the artificial thing that intellec- 
tualism has tried to make it. Religion is essentially primi- 
tive and must forever remain such if it is to continue to 
be the religion of the people. Magic, myth, ceremonial 
and mystery are its very essence; whereas religion robbed 
of these is a mere petrified vestige of what was once re- 
ligion. 

A similar truth holds of society. Intellectualism creates 
policies that are utterly Utopian and impossible. The 
group mind with all its instinctive and blind impulses is 
the true power creating the state and the culture of so- 
ciety. Human history is not the result of rational fore- 
sight but of impulse and blind groping in which the group 
mind is seeking to satisfy all the needs of man. And re- 
member that these needs are revealed in the instinctive 
man and are not the discovery, or creation of reason. 
Finally, a similar truth holds of the entire human enter- 
prise. It began in the jungle and it will end in the jungle. 
It can never successfully be naturalized in the artificial 
gardens of civilization and intellectualism. 

Therefore says the romanticist, the intellectualist may 
well respect the primitive mind and the group mind; and 



382 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

whether he does or not, they will persist and will in the 
end control him. However, let him not yield to these 
primitive and group minds grudgingly; rather let him see 
that they alone deserve confidence, for they alone are 
right and truthful, they alone have seen man thus far 
on his long journey and they alone are able to see him to the 
journey's end. 

6. The influence of romanticism upon the thought of 
the nineteenth century. — The influence of romanticism 
upon the thought of the nineteenth century can hardly 
be overestimated. The eighteenth and nineteenth cen- 
turies stand in marked contrast in almost every field of 
spiritual life, and this difference of attitude is due pre- 
eminently to the romantic movement. The chief places 
in which the new attitude has manifested itself, have been 
already mentioned: art, literature, religion, and the nu- 
merous departments of historical research. The revival 
of gothic architecture, the love of nature, the interest 
in the folk-life and customs, the appeal of romantic passion 
and the fondness for content as opposed to form illustrate 
the change in art. The romantic poetry of Burns, Words- 
worth, Coleridge, Shelley and Keats and the fiction of 
Scott, Hugo and Dumas illustrate the new attitude in liter- 
ature. Methodism, the Oxford movement in the Church of 
England and the general revival of the spirit and emotions 
of medieval religion illustrate the transformation that has 
taken place in the religious life. The universal interest 
in the past from which the modern world is descended, 
in its life, customs, art, language, literature, religion and 
institutions illustrate the extreme change from the narrow 
interest of the eighteenth century in the future and in the 
Utopian belief in human perfectibility. 

Such differences indicate not merely superficial changes 
but such fundamental changes in thought and feeling as 
we have called philosophical. Without difficulty and with 



ROMANTICISM 383 

conviction, numerous intellectual leaders in the nineteenth 
century and the thoughtful people whom they have in- 
fluenced, think of the world in terms of life and will rather 
than in terms of mechanics or physical science; and the 
immanent God of pantheism has become almost a popu- 
lar belief. Spinoza, Hegel, Schopenhauer and, in our day, 
Bergson receive widely a hearing, while a hearing is but 
grudgingly given to the apostles of the Enlightenment and 
the French Revolution. All of this has meant a radical 
change in the method and means by which thoughtful men 
endeavor to justify to themselves what they believe and 
what they hope, from the means and methods employed, 
for example, by Descartes and the eighteenth century reli- 
gious thinkers. In a sentence, the primacy of the heart 
and will over the intellect, and the intuition of the mystic 
are respectively typical principles and typical courts of 
ultimate appeal in the philosophy of the nineteenth cen- 
tury. 

For more extensive study read: 

McGiffert, A. C, The Rise of Modern Religious Ideas, 1915; 

Eucken, R. (transl. Pogson), Life of the Spirit; 

Eucken, R. (transl. Gibson), The Meaning and Value of 
Life; 

Inge, W. R., Christian Mysticism, 1899; 

Tyrrell, G., Lex credendi, 1906; Lex orandi, 1904; Through 
Scylla and Charybdis, 1907; 

Symons, A., Romantic Movement in English Poetry, 1909; 

Beers, H. A., History of English Romanticism in the Eight- 
eenth Century, 1910; 

Beers, H. A., History of English Romanticism in the Nine- 
teenth Century, 1901; 

Phelps, W. L., Beginnings of the English Romantic Move- 
ment, 1893; 

Pellissier, G. (transl. Brinton), The Literary Movement in 
France during the Nineteenth Century, 1897. 



CHAPTER XXVII 

PRESENT PHILOSOPHICAL TENDENCIES 

1. Introductory. — The field of study in this chapter is 
approximately the past fifty years, the last third of the 
nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth 
century. In this brief period is to be found all that is 
older in philosophic thought and much that is new; and 
the old and the new together make present philosophic 
thought extremely varied and highly composite. On the 
one hand, all the earlier movements from the very begin- 
ning of modern times have survived into the present. 
On the other hand, genuinely new elements or movements 
have become prominent in the last fifty years and have 
given the present age a characteristic and peculiar trend. 
On the one hand, we are children of the past and exemplify 
various inherited strains of older philosophic thought. 
On the other hand, the past fifty years are as great for 
genuine philosophical progress as for scientific discovery 
and utilitarian invention. The total resultant of these 
many movements has made us philosophically different 
even from the Europe and America of only fifty years ago. 

With Europe of the eighteenth century we share the 
older rationalism and mechanistic naturalism, the older 
phenomenalism, positivism and idealism; and with Europe 
of the nineteenth century we share the evolutionistic 
philosophy and the romantic philosophy. On the one 
hand, the French Revolution and all that it connotes in 
the life of Europe of a hundred years ago is still a genuine 
element in our present spiritual, intellectual, moral and 

384 



PRESENT PHILOSOPHICAL TENDENCIES 385 

political life. On the other hand, romanticism and evolu- 
tionary philosophy have become prominent and powerful 
elements to be found throughout the intellectual and 
practical life of the western world. But at the same time 
the change in the philosophy of the intellectual world 
from that typical of the late eighteenth century to that 
typical of the late nineteenth is immense. Besides roman- 
ticism and the evolutionary philosophy whose influence 
in producing this change I have already discussed, there 
remain, it seems to me, four prominent factors to be studied 
in this chapter. First, there is the philosophical influ- 
ence upon the older naturalism of the exceeding numerous 
discoveries in the mathematical, physical and biologi- 
cal sciences. Second, there is the outgrowing of the older 
rationalism and the rising in its place of experimentalism 
and the allied intellectual attitudes, a change due not 
only to the evolutionary philosophy but also to the growth 
of the field of experimental research. Third, there is the 
appearance of efforts to go back beyond Cartesian dualism 
and all its resulting philosophies, which means to go back 
beyond Greek science and to interpret anew in the light 
of modern science the facts of mental life. Fourth and 
last, there is the great moral and political change from the 
individualism of the older democratic movements of the 
eighteenth century to the implicit socialism of contempo- 
rary moralists and political theorists and leaders. 

In the first place, the world has come to seem to us vastly 
more complex than it did to Laplace and to his contempo- 
raries who entertained the mechanistic naturalism founded 
on mechanics and the gravitational astronomy. It may be 
that mechanistic naturalism will be victor in the long run; 
but even so, the scientist of to-day apprehends how very 
far we still are from knowing the complex world revealed 
to us in physics, chemistry and physiology to be explicable 
solely in terms of the propositions and notions of mechan- 



386 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

ics. 1 In the second place, the intellectual optimism ex- 
emplified in the rationalism of the seventeenth and eight- 
eenth centuries has come to seem quite adolescent. Ex- 
perimentalism and, in the broadest sense of the word, 
pragmatism are to-day characteristic philosophical atti- 
tudes taken by intellectual and scientific leaders in the 
world of thought. In the third place, though the vast 
majority of intellectual men are still Cartesians in their 
psychological thought, distinct signs are visible among 
biologists, psychologists and philosophers of dissatisfac- 
tion with and perplexity about the pre-scientific concep- 
tion of the mind persisting in Cartesian dualism and in its 
logical consequences. Behaviorism and in particular a 
new realism are offered to supplant the subjectivism of the 
seventeenth and eighteenth century phenomenalism and 
idealism. Finally, a new social religion has been spread- 
ing throughout industrial democracy, a religion that may 
be called, in the broadest sense of the word, socialism, 
supplanting the individualism of the older liberal and 
in particular supplanting his belief in ruthless competi- 
tion. 

Let us select as the subject of this chapter these four 
matters which seem to be the four new and major factors 
(in addition to romanticism and the doctrine of evolution) 
in producing the marked change in philosophic thought 
that has taken place during the nineteenth century and 
especially during the past fifty years: namely, the change 
in naturalism; the growing experimentalism; the new 
realism; and the social democracy. And as a preliminary J 
to this study, let us first review briefly the growth and 
philosophical development of science during the same 
period. 

1 Even gravitational astronomy itself may yet be based on postu- 
lates that are not deducible from mechanics but from a new science, 
the science of the ether. 



PRESENT PHILOSOPHICAL TENDENCIES 387 

For further study read: 

Hadley, A. T., Some Influences in Modern Philosophical 
Thought, 1913. 
For more extensive study read: 

Merz, J. T., History of European Thought in the Nineteenth 

Century, 1904-14; 
Perry, R. B., Present Philosophical Tendencies, 1912; 
Stein, L., Philosophische Stromungen der Gegenwart, 1908. 

2. The scientific achievement of the nineteenth cen- 
tury. — The growth of modern science is comparable to 
the growth of a farm to which field after field has been 
added at different times and on which the methods of 
cultivation have everywhere tended to pass from those of 
extensive to those of intensive farming. In the seven- 
teenth century certain fields were added to the few culti- 
vated in the earlier centuries and their cultivation reached 
a truly scientific standard of excellence. These fields were 
especially astronomy, mathematics, mechanics and physi- 
ology. The eighteenth century witnessed a more intensive 
cultivation of these fields and the addition especially of 
chemistry, geology, zoology and botany as new fields of 
scientific labor. The nineteenth century witnessed vast 
achievement in the older fields, the raising of the culti- 
vation of the later fields to a thoroughly scientific level, 
and the broadening out of the whole domain of science 
until it included the all but innumerable fields of present 
research. 

During the nineteenth century the older fields of science 
have themselves become vast domains. Mathematics 
has expanded far beyond what a man can master in a life- 
time. Physical science has come to include the vast 
fields of electricity, magnetism, light and heat. The older 
fields of gravitational and observational astronomy have 
been greatly enlarged through the discoveries made possi- 
ble by far better instruments and methods, and to gravi- 



388 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

tational astronomy has been added the field of physical 
astronomy. The small and struggling science of chemistry 
of the eighteenth century has become the enormous en- 
terprise and field of present chemical research. Geology 
and mineralogy were added to the other sciences hardly 
before the end of the eighteenth century and they have 
since become extensive domains of investigation. The 
already large fields of eighteenth century zoology and 
botany have been added to not only by further exploring 
within the older territory of morphology but also by annex- 
ing the new fields of embryology, phylogeny, protozoology 
and protobotany. But the older fields of science have not 
only become vast domains, they have also passed from the 
stages of pre-experimental, or the early stage of experi- 
mental cultivation, to that of the elaborately and rigor- 
ously experimental. 

Not only have the older fields of science become widely 
extended during the nineteenth century but new fields 
have been added to science. These new fields are in gen- 
eral those of man and society, and of the history of all 
that makes up human culture. True, many of these fields 
such as psychology, politics and history were long before 
fields of study and thought; but they were never before 
truly fields of that systematic, organized and genuinely 
inductive research attained by modern science. In the 
first half of the century in Germany and as part of the 
romantic movement came, as we have seen, the beginning 
of that mighty movement which so characterizes the 
present time, namely, historical research. The field of 
this movement at first included besides political, or gen- 
eral history, especially the history of language, of art, of 
thought and of Christianity; but since that time it has 
come to include the evolutionary study of virtually every 
aspect or part of man's life. In anthropology, psychology 
and allied subjects man and his mind have come to be 



PRESENT PHILOSOPHICAL TENDENCIES 389 

studied elaborately and systematically. In social and 
political science, and in economics the older more or less 
speculative and rationalistic writings of thoughtful but 
isolated men have tended to become the more and more 
co-operative, inductive and systematic research of a body 
of scientists. However, this transformation of history, 
anthropology, psychology, social, political and economic 
science from rationalistic sciences into genuinely experi- 
mental, inductive and organized forms of research is rel- 
atively recent and is by no means complete. Still, that 
it is taking place is one of the most significant facts in the 
philosophical development of our time. 

This mere skeleton outline of the scientific achievement 
of the past one hundred years, inadequate as it necessarily 
is, is surely enough to make us perceive at least the vast- 
ness of the growth of science during the recent decades of 
European history. Nothing in the entire history of 
science is comparable to it in mere vastness and it makes 
our age in this respect unique in the history of man. It 
has made us scientific in place after place where our fore- 
fathers were prescientific and even primitive. It has sub- 
stituted skill and insight in countless situations of life 
where our ancestors could respond only instinctively, 
blindly, or emotionally. 1 Not only has this vast growth of 
science transformed completely the world we understand 
but it has also had two immense economic and political 
consequences, a direct one, the enormous increase in wealth 
and population and the marked shortening of the distance 
between place and place and, an indirect one, the greater 
socialization within the nations and within the inter- 
national world. It has made man more independent of 

1 Consider but one prominent example, the winning of a knowl- 
edge and control of infectious and contagious diseases and the out- 
growing of the hit and miss medical practice of our forefathers but a 
few generations ago. 



390 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

his natural environment than ever before, and it has 
given him a self-confidence to undertake and to control 
what in the ancient world belonged only to the gods to 
execute and to administer. Nonetheless, increased knowl- 
edge has brought an increased realization of ignorance and 
a corresponding caution and modesty. A distinctly hum- 
bler intellectualism and sense of power has superseded the 
confidence exhibited by our fathers in the heyday of early 
scientific achievement. In other words, the distinctly 
adolescent self-confidence exhibited in the intellectual life 
of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries has given 
place to a caution and a reserve in the intellectual life of 
the great thinker of to-day which in contrast seems to mark 
manhood. 

For further and for more extensive study read: 

(For mathematics) Merz, History of European Thought in 

the Nineteenth Century, chapter XIII; 
Russell, B., Recent Work on the Principles of Mathematics, 

in International Monthly, 1901, 4- 
(For astronomy) Berry, Short History of Astronomy, 323- 

409. 
(For physics) Merz, ibid., chapters VI and VII; 
Cajori, History of Physics, 137-305; 
Whetham, W. C. D., The Recent Development of Physical 

Science, 1909. 
(For chemistry) Tilden, W. A., Short History of the Progress 

of Scientific Chemistry in Our Times, 1899; 
Thorpe, T. E., History of Chemistry, 1909-10; 
Meyers, E. S. C, History of Chemistry, 1906. 
(For geology) von Zittel, K. A. (transl. Ogilvie-Gordon), 

History of Geology and Palaeontology, 1901. 
(For biology) Darwin and Modern Science, 1909; 
Merz, ibid., chapters IX and X. 
(For psychology) Merz, ibid., chapter XI. 
(For social and economic science) Robinson, J. H., The New 

History, especially chapter III; 



PRESENT PHILOSOPHICAL TENDENCIES 391 

Sociological Papers, 1905, The Macmillan Co. ; 
Ingram, J. K., History of Political Economy, 2d ed., 1907. 
(For anthropology) Haddon, A. C, History of Anthropology, 
1910. 

3. The great discoveries of marked philosophical im- 
portance. — The science of mathematics has grown not 
only in extent but also philosophically by an amount that 
makes the mathematical achievement of the nineteenth 
century comparable to that of the golden age of Greece. 
Beginning with the labors of Gauss (fl. 1820) and Cauchy 
(fl. 1830) the science has become more truly deductive and 
more thoroughly organized, its fundamental notions have 
been rigorously defined and its fundamental assumptions 
have become more and more explicit. The general ten- 
dency has been to unify mathematics. The most impor- 
tant and fundamental notions of the science, many of them 
used from the days of Greek mathematics, have for the 
first time in history been rigorously defined. Prominent 
among these notions are those of number, infinity, order, 
continuity, and the fundamental operations of algebra 
and the fundamental notions, assumptions and trans- 
formations of geometry. Besides making the science more 
genuinely rigorous, deductive and simple the philosophical 
mathematician has come to a clearer apprehension of the 
nature of his science. This has led to one of the most 
important philosophical discoveries in the intellectual 
history of man, to the discovery that pure mathematics 
is a non-existential science. Ancient thought and modern 
thought in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries nat- 
urally led to rationalism because the thinker believed that 
he had in mathematics an infallible and a priori theory of 
reality; 1 for mathematics seemed an instance of the mind 

1 Of such rationalism the theory of Kant is a prominent example. 
Convinced that mathematics is not an experimental science but a 
science that the mind achieves by its own intuition and convinced 



392 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

by pure reflection and independent of observation and 
experiment discovering what reality has to be. 

In physical science also, besides great increase in infor- 
mation, there has been great progress philosophically. 
The sciences of light, heat, electricity and magnetism, so 
largely the achievement of the nineteenth century, have 
completely transformed our insight into the nature of the 
world of matter and energy. Physical research has added 
to our universe a world, the world of the ether and its 
undulations; it has broadened our conception of energy 

that mathematics is not only infallible but also true of the existent 
world of our experience, Kant inferred the following remarkable 
rationalistic theory of reality. All the mathematical aspects of the 
world are the product of the mind and literally depend upon the 
mind for their existence. Thus space and time and all those aspects 
of the material world which exemplify the principles of the New- 
tonian mechanics are fundamental mind-given aspects, or forms of 
experience. That is to say, the world is a spatial, temporal, material 
and mechanical world because of the nature of the mind and not 
independently of the mind. These forms of our intuition and under- 
standing make our world the sort of world it is and therefore if our 
mind had other forms the world would be mathematically different 
or even non-mathematical. Such a theory seemed thoroughly sound 
in 1781 and for decades afterward and seemed so to many of the 
greatest intellects. To-day it does not seem sound to the mathema- 
tician, for mathematics is not an existential science. A world of 
different geometrical characteristics from those we believe to be 
possessed by the existent world is mathematically possible. The real 
world is thought of by us to be geometrically Euclidean and three 
dimensional; but a non-Euclidean world or an n-dimensional world 
would as truly exemplify mathematical theory. In other words, 
mathematics makes no assertions whatever regarding what exists or 
what does not, but asserts merely the consequences of certain hy- 
potheses, it may be at one time the consequences of one hypothesis 
and at another time the consequences of the contradictory hypothe- 
sis, leaving the question quite open which of these hypotheses is true 
of the existing world or even if either is true of this world. In short, 
one of the greatest bulwarks of rationalistic theories of reality has 
been destroyed by this remarkable philosophical discovery within 
mathematics. 



PRESENT PHILOSOPHICAL TENDENCIES 393 

and has reformulated the older principle of the conserva- 
tion of motion into the principle of the conservation of 
energy; and it has raised a philosophical difficulty of pro- 
found theoretical importance, the irreversibility of nature's 
processes. 

During the last two decades, discoveries have been 
made of even greater assistance to an insight into the 
nature of the physical world. Indeed, it has been said 
that during these few years man has learned more regard- 
ing the nature of matter than he had in all the past of his 
history. I refer, of course, to the discoveries resulting 
from investigating radioactivity. The electron hypothesis 
promises to bridge the gap between the ether and the world 
of matter and between the world of physics and that of 
chemistry. Some day it may even make the chemical 
elements and their properties deducible from the logically 
prior physical science. Before these discoveries the uni- 
verse of mechanics and the universe of chemistry were 
so distant that the gap between them formed a serious 
philosophical embarrassment. Of course, the belief was 
entertained that some day mechanics might account for 
the chemical, but there was little to justify the belief. 
Now, however, we may reasonably hope that science will 
in time find all the bridges necessary to pass from the 
ethereal disturbances, light, heat, electricity and magnet- 
ism without logical break to chemistry. If this hope is in 
fact realized, it will be one of the greatest philosophical 
triumphs, if not the greatest philosophical triumph of 
the intellect of man. 

Within chemistry itself have been made many discov- 
eries of great philosophical importance; x but it is quite 

1 Prominent among these discoveries that tend to make chemistry 
deductive are the great advances in physical ichemistry, e. g. f the 
theory of gases and of solution, of osmosis and of ionization, the dis- 
coveries that collectively make up stereo-chemistry and such dis- 



394 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

beyond the scope of this chapter even to summarize them. 
If we mean by the philosophical progress of a science its move- 
ment toward being a purely deductive science, then chem- 
istry has made marked philosophical progress during the nine- 
teenth century and especially during the past sixty years, 
far as it still is from being actually a deductive science. 

The progress in biochemistry has been peculiarly of 
philosophical importance because the chasm between the 
inorganic and the living is wide and unbridged. However, 
the bridge is certainly under construction whether or not 
it will ever be completed. From both sides of the chasm 
the scientists of the past fifty years have been approaching 
one another. On the one side, physical and organic 
chemists have little by little learned to do in their labora- 
tories a few of the things that the living cells of animals 
and plants do. True, they do these things usually by dif- 
ferent methods, but the methods used by the living are 
in part understood. For example, the discovery of osmosis 
and the presence and function of enzymes uncover many 
old mysteries. On the other side, the physiologist is be- 
coming more and more of a chemist, and he is becoming 
one because he is finding more and more chemistry in the 
doings of living cells and because chemistry is helping him 
explain many of the facts he encounters. For example, 
the characteristic phenomena of the living cell and of its 
division, the action of toxins, the secretion of glands and 
the effects of internal secretions and the interaction of 
cells in the multicellular organism are noticeably becoming 
more and more physico-chemical problems. All of which 
does not prove that the bridge between chemistry and 
physiology will ever be completed, but it does indicate 
the marked progress of bio-chemical research toward this 
end during the recent decades. 

coveries as the periodic law of MendelSeff, valency, and the methods 
of building up synthetically organic compounds. 



PRESENT PHILOSOPHICAL TENDENCIES 395 

Moreover, another important bridge is building between 
the living cell and the simplest organic compounds. We 
may call it an evolutionary bridge. The vast distance in 
terms of evolution between a bacterium and a relatively 
simple organic molecule was not fully appreciated a few 
decades ago. In recent decades, however, the study of the 
cell has made the scientist perceive what an extremely 
complex chemical-physical machine it must be and what 
an enormous distance had to be traversed by evolution 
in passing from inorganic matter to a bacterium, a longer 
distance probably than from the unicellular organisms to 
man. Evidently if there has been such an evolution it is a 
matter of prime philosophical importance to verify this 
and to discover intervening links in the evolutionary 
chain. Two centuries ago the discovery of the unicellular 
organisms themselves was a discovery of precisely such an 
important link between the familiar animals and plants 
and the lifeless world, a discovery that may without 
exaggerating be called the discovery of a world, the vast 
world of primitive life. In these days the organic chemist 
is discovering another such vast world, this world lying 
between the living cell and the simpler organic molecules. 
Perhaps it may be called the land of molecular chains. 
That is to say, in such a discovery as that of the colloids 
biochemistry and organic chemistry are literally discover- 
ing a world with an enormous population but a world 
heretofore completely hidden from our view as the world 
of primitive life was hidden before the microscope. If 
only we can come to know this world well, the evolution- 
ary gap between the living cell and the simple organic 
molecule may indeed be bridged by a chain of intervening 
forms, and thus another serious philosophical embarrass- 
ment may be forever removed. 

Within general physiology also there has been decided 
philosophical progress even since the days of Darwin. 



396 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

As one biologist has expressed this advance, " Darwin 
seems almost as far away as does Democritus." Physiol- 
ogy has been shifting from a science of the gross organism 
to a science of the processes within and about the living 
cells. Thus in these latter decades the discovery of the 
cellular structure of the living organism made early in the 
nineteenth century has become for biology what Dalton's 
doctrine of atomism has long been for chemistry. That 
discovery predestined the science to become an atomic 
theory, and this it has since literally become. Moreover, 
the very doctrine of the evolution of the forms of life has 
become a problem of the evolution of atomic entities; for 
the study of the mechanics of heredity has opened to our 
view another atomism in the Mendelian and other factors 
present in the germ-plasm which determine the adult or 
mature form. Thus to-day the evolutionary problem has 
been shifted from the problem of the origin of the adult 
forms to the problem of the origin of the germ-plasm these 
adult forms carry, and of the origin of the heredity factors 
this germ-plasm contains. 

The study of behavior, or of mental life also has made 
great philosophical strides forward. Not only has this 
study become experimental and genuinely inductive; 
but discoveries have been made of truly philosophical 
importance. The science has tended to expand into a 
general science of behavior and not to remain merely a 
science of the human mind; that is to say, the science of 
the human mind is not sui generis but is an arbitrary sec- 
tion of the general science of behavior. On the one hand, 
the same general evolutionary continuity is being dis- 
covered between the behavior of the simpler organism and 
the behavior of man as Darwin discovered in their mor- 
phology. On the other hand, the same general approach 
toward an atomic theory is evident in psychology as in 
physiology. The conduct of the more complex organisms 



PRESENT PHILOSOPHICAL TENDENCIES 397 

is in part built out of the conduct of the less complex 
organisms of the same evolutionary line; and the chief 
addition besides new atoms of behavior is the further 
organization of these older atomic forms of behavior into 
more complex or more highly integrated systems. For 
example, already in the behavior of the common garden 
worm is to be seen the prophecy of behavior as complex 
as that of man. 

Finally, we come to the science of man and society and 
to the science of the origin of man's customs, tools, arts 
and institutions. Here likewise the same story is to be 
told of important philosophical discoveries during the 
past fifty years. The discovery of the customs, tools and 
arts of primitive man is making ever clearer the evolution 
of human civilization. The study of primitive societies 
is doing a similar work for the historian of society. Again, 
man, the atom of social evolution, is better understood; 
and hence it is possible to explain more of human history 
than ever before. The gap between man and his anthro- 
poidal ancestor is being bridged by the discovery of inter- 
vening types of men and intervening types of culture. 
In general, this extensive field of research exhibits the 
same philosophical approach, as do the biological sciences, 
toward atomism and evolutionary continuity. 

For further and for more extensive study read: 

(For mathematics), Young, J. W., Lectures on the Funda- 
mental Concepts of Algebra and Geometry, 1911. 

(For physical science) Hoffding, History of Modern Philoso- 
phy, Vol. II, 493-498; 

Mach, E. (transl. McCormack), Popular Scientific Lectures, 
137-185; 

Nunn, T. P., Animism and the Doctrine of Energy, Proc. 
of Aristotelian Soc. N. S. 12, 1912; 

Duncan, R. K., The New Knowledge, 1910; 

Whetham, Recent Development of Physical Science. 



398 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

(For biochemistry) Moore, Origin and Nature of Life (Home 

University Library); 
Noel Paton, D., A Physiologist's View of Life and Mind, 

Hibbert Journal, 1915, 13. 
(For physiology) Darwin and Modern Science, 1909. 
(For psychology) Watson, J. B., Behavior, An Introduction 

to Comparative Psychology, 1914. 
(For anthropology) Marett, R. R., Anthropology (Home 

University Library). 

4. Naturalism. — The two preceding sections have 
briefly indicated the remarkable triumph of naturalism 
in the past one hundred years. If the thinkers of the 
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were justified in 
setting aside magic and animism as inadequate hypotheses, 
certainly the thinker of to-day has a thousand times as 
much evidence to justify him in so doing. But intellec- 
tual history is not a mere growth in the amount of evidence 
collected for or against this or that hypothesis. New 
information often reveals the hidden complexity of the 
old problem, unseen when the problem was first raised; 
and therefore its effect is often to lessen confidence. How- 
ever, naturalism has grown greatly in strength and in 
the number of its disciples. The intellectual classes and 
the general public have never before been as naturalistic 
as they are to-day. In the main the bitter controversies 
against naturalistic science are over and naturalism has 
won the fight. From star dust to man and society, 
from celestial mechanics to psychology and sociology our 
sciences study the problems raised in a naturalistic way 
and in this way as a matter of course. Some of the great 
gaps in the evidence justifying the naturalistic conception 
of the world are now at least partly filled. Such gaps we 
have seen to be the gap between the prechemical matter 
and the chemical elements and molecules, the gap between 
the world of inorganic chemistry and the world of living 



PRESENT PHILOSOPHICAL TENDENCIES 399 

organisms, the gap between unicellular life and man, and 
the gaps between the rude culture and society of the pre- 
historic man and the religion, art, science, industry, gov- 
ernment, language, and in general the civilization of the 
present European peoples. Thus the evolutionary hypoth- 
esis so essential to naturalism is firmly fixed in our intellec- 
tual habits. Again, the possibility of science explaining 
deductively the complex out of the relatively simple, the 
chemical out of the prechemical, the vital out of the 
chemical, the mental out of the vital, and the social out 
of the mental, seems more than ever justified as an hy- 
pothesis and as a plan and ideal goal of research. Indeed, 
never have supernatural and animistic hypotheses been 
less in evidence than they are in the contemporary trea- 
tises of science or in the discussions of the learned world. 

Yet at the same time the older mechanistic naturalism 
of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries seems to 
thoughtful men to-day altogether too simple. This older 
naturalism was based solely, as we have seen, upon the 
gravitational astronomy and the mathematical science 
of mechanics, which implies that it was based upon but 
a very small part of modern science as it now obtains. 
Hence, if we are to-day naturalists, we are naturalists fac- 
ing a world indefinitely more complex than the one appre- 
hended by the scientist of one hundred and fifty years ago, 
we are naturalists far from being convinced that the New- 
tonian mechanics is to be in the long run the fundamental 
physical science, we are naturalists far from being confi- 
dent that the profound gaps between the various strata 
of reality can ever be bridged completely, and we are nat- 
uralists who are skeptical in our present ignorance toward 
all attempts to deduce the nature of reality by taking the 
results of one science and making them the premises of a 
universal science. 

This skepticism can be best illustrated by the actual 



400 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

revival in our time of vitalism and animism. To some 
thinkers the gap between the physical-chemical world 
and that of life and the gap between the physiological and 
the mental seem quite unbridgeable. In short, vitalism 
and animism have reappeared in the scientific world itself. 
That is to say, life and mind are thought by some scien- 
tists to be radically distinct respectively from the chemical 
and from the physiological; for remarkable as are admitted 
to be the triumphs of biochemistry and neural physiology, 
these achievements do not explain the facts that are pecu- 
liarly vital or mental. According to the vitalist, life has 
an irreducible teleological property which chemistry in no 
way explains; for life adapts itself to the future and in 
this sense exhibits purpose, whereas chemistry is as un- 
able to explain purpose as it is to judge of the beauty of 
a painting. According to the anhnist, the higher types of 
mind exhibit memory and personality which make any 
atomic theory whatsoever inadequate, and therefore they 
cannot be explained by discovering the way in which neu- 
rons are organized, or integrated. Hence these thinkers 
maintain that to explain life and mind we must assume a 
vital principle or entity over and above the chemical 
molecules and their compounds and a soul over and above 
the mental as explained by the laws of inborn and acquired 
neural connections. These thinkers, the neo-vitalists and 
the neo-animists, though many in number remain relatively 
a small party. In general, the scientific world seems 
disposed to keep to its naturalistic working hypotheses 
and naturalistic spirit of research. 1 

1 Besides the neo-vitalists and the neo-animists, there is a third 
group of physiologists who doubt the ability of science to discover 
complete logical continuity between the relatively simple and the 
relatively complex strata of reality. They maintain that there is 
danger in trying to simplify the complex and to deal with the con- 
crete in terms of high abstractions. The complex and the concrete 
are the real; and the abstract sciences such as physics and chemistry 



PRESENT PHILOSOPHICAL TENDENCIES 401 

For more extensive study read: 

Driesch, H. (transl. Ogden), History and Theory of Vitalism, 
1914; 

Haldane, J. S., Mechanism, Life and Personality, 1914; 

Moore, Origin and Nature of Life (Home University Li- 
brary); 

McDougall, W., Body and Mind. 

5. Rationalism and experimentalism. — During the 
past fifty years the trend away from rationalism and to- 
ward experimentalism has been marked. Though ration- 
alism is still frequently to be found, remarkably little 
remains of the confidence, so prominent in the think- 
ers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, that 
mere thought can discover and verify vast existential 
hypotheses and that man's mind has in it the powers to 
elaborate independently of experience either what does 
exist or what should exist. In the intervening period 
thoughtful men have seen such theories end so often in 
failure, and have learned so much better the nature of 
human discovery that they expect mere reasoning to be 
usually in the wrong. They have seen the simple problems 
of speculation prove so often to be the extremely complex 
problems of fact, and they have beheld the few problems 
of an earlier stage of a science develop into the numerous 
problems of a later stage; that they are well aware that the 
work of science is never done and therefore they expect 
their conclusions and hypotheses to be soon outgrown 
through the work of the next generation of investigators. 

are inadequate to deal with the total nature of the real, for no matter 
how successful these sciences are, they always leave a residue un- 
explained, or they belie by their very simplicity the richness of the 
real. However, this protest against oversimplification on the part 
of science does not mean that these thinkers in any way question the 
results of science or are hostile to the naturalistic program of re- 
search. Rather, it means, that they believe physical science as a 
world conception to be inadequate. 



402 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

To be ignorant is one thing but to be aware of that 
ignorance, to be conscious that theories are tentative, to 
admit that experiment must take the place of mere deduc- 
tion, these are different things. To hold therefore to theo- 
ries loosely, to expect to see them outgrown, to be con- 
scious how utterly unverified our fondest deductions often 
remain, to see that we have got them in the only way 
available in our ignorance but in a way that makes them 
doubtful, and to strive to substitute for mere logic the 
appeal to facts, to exhibit such traits is to give evidence of 
a new philosophy, is to outgrow rationalism and to become 
experimentalists. This change of spirit is evident through- 
out the length and breadth of science and indeed of the 
intellectual life of our time. It has come slowly for it was 
exhibited as a genuine philosophic trait in Galilei long 
ago but now it has made its way until it can be truly called 
an important part of the spirit of the age. In contrast, 
think of the isms and the ologies of the past two hundred 
years, in science, in religion and morals, in politics and 
economic policy, in dealing with the criminal and the 
pauper, in educating children, and in caring for the sick! 

6. Intellectualism and pragmatism. — The pendulum 
that we see thus swinging can swing even farther, as recent 
philosophic thought proves. Science must become not 
merely experimental but also practical. By science being 
practical two doctrines are implied. First, the entire 
intellectual career of man is merely a part of his life and 
shares with his other behavior its general biological char- 
acter, which is adjustment to internal and environmental 
conditions. That is to say, when we know, we are behav- 
ing as truly as when we eat, we are as organisms adjusting 
our responses to conditions and fulfilling life's needs. The 
man seeking his escape from a forest is as truly an organ- 
ism responding to a biological need as is a hungry man 
eating. The child in school endeavoring to work out its 



PRESENT PHILOSOPHICAL TENDENCIES 403 

arithmetical problems is an organism face to face with an 
environmental embarrassment that it must meet and to 
which it as an organism has certain instinctive and ac- 
quired ways of responding, precisely as is a cat caught in 
a trap. In short, man in his entire intellectual enterprise, 
be the particular task in the chemical laboratory, the 
mathematician's study, the counting room, or the car- 
penter shop, is likewise but responding as an organism 
to the needs and environmental conditions which form 
the total situation of the moment. If then the work of the 
intellect is response as truly as is the work of the arms or 
legs, it follows that science cannot be correctly understood 
and interpreted until we regard it as a form of human re- 
sponse. In other words, science is not understood, if we 
regard it, as did the older philosophers, as an ideal contem- 
plation of a passing panorama, or as the discovery of a 
real world unrelated to man's biological nature and made 
an object of study by a curiosity that is biologically 
superhuman. Rather science is of the earth, earthy; it 
is the product of human toil; and its authorship is as 
human as is that of a coat or a house. Therefore divorced 
from human life and studied in abstracto it is nothing 
whatever, nothing more than the grin of Alice's Cheshire 
cat with the cat gone. 

Moreover, consider the notion of reality of the intellec- 
tualistic philosopher; for this too is the abiding grin of the 
absent cat. Reality is for man a biological notion. It 
means nothing unless expressed in terms of human be- 
havior. It means conditions man must meet to live and 
thrive, it means instruments man must use to gain his 
ends, it means the world of human ambition, the world 
responded to ultimately by the instinctive nature of man. 
Man has no more a naked curiosity or a universal curiosity 
than has a spider an instinct to weave all possible types 
of webs, or to weave webs merely for the sake of giving 



404 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

entomologists something to study. The real world for 
man is human in the same sense as man's bill of fare is 
human or man's way of walking is human. Superhuman 
reality is an empty abstraction. For example, if man 
never had a disease, a broken bone or an abnormal growth, 
what would the science of medicine be, how would such a 
science have ever arisen, by what possible means could 
there be either a debate about or a test of medical theory? 
It would all be as meaningless as a drama written to play 
before the walls of the house as the audience, or as a ma- 
chine invented to do nothing in particular. 

Therefore, let the experimentalist not only reject ra- 
tionalism but let him also reject intellectualism. Let 
him humanize science, see in it man's trial and error and 
instinctive responses. Let him define truth and reality 
in terms of the practical, in terms of the successful re- 
sponse, in terms of man's life and interests, and mean by 
the universe the field of human response and interest. 
Let him see in the scientist precisely what he has long ago 
seen in the inventor of machines, the student of medicine, 
the writer of dramas, the builder of houses, the farmer 
and the laborer. 

Second, "science being practical ,, implies that man 
should avoid abstract science divorced from concrete prob- 
lems. That is to say, if knowing is a response; it is a re- 
sponse to a present concrete situation, the solution of actual 
human problems as man faces those problems. It is noth- 
ing else by right. If made anything else by dreamers, ra- 
tionalists and intellectualists, it is as vain an enterprise as 
the search for the fountain of perpetual youth or the search 
for the holy grail. Man does not, as a biological entity, 
face abstract situations or situations in general; he faces 
always concrete and present situations. For example, the 
physician is not called upon to cure typhoid fever but 
this man sick with typhoid fever; therefore unless his 



PRESENT PHILOSOPHICAL TENDENCIES 405 

science teaches him to meet this real situation and not 
some imaginary general and abstract situation it is a mere 
delusion. In general, all disputes or all problems that 
we have the bad habit of divorcing from the forms in 
which they are met in concrete situations, should be 
promptly returned to their concrete setting before further 
discussion or further research. Be a concrete chemist, 
or a concrete mathematician, or a concrete physician. 
The habit of wandering into pure theory divorced from the 
concrete is an intellectual vice. Consider, as an example, 
the fine old debates regarding the freedom of man's will 
and in particular regarding what a donkey would do mid- 
way between two bundles of hay. How utterly idle! 
You and I meet human responsibility not in the abstract 
but in the concrete. Our actual problems are, what to do 
with this insane man, with this drunkard, with this feeble- 
minded child, with this ambitious and intellectual boy. 
Let the man who wishes to argue with you whether or not 
the human will is free, state actual concrete instances of 
human conduct and state precisely what he would mean 
in the given instances by acts of free will and then if neces- 
sary try the experiment of watching the actual cases. 

Pragmatism, as this reaction against intellectualism is 
called, is a distinct and growing element in the philosophic 
thought of the past fifty years and is a natural companion 
of experimentalism. During this time it has made its 
presence felt in almost every department of western in- 
tellectual life. In art and literature it makes its presence 
evident in a rebellion against any fixed principles such as 
formalism and in the general artistic doctrine that the 
individual should throw off the authority of tradition and 
frankly put in the place of this authority his own likes and 
dislikes. That is to say, there are no universal principles 
of the artistic and the beautiful, but rather there are the 
concrete tastes of the individuals that make up the in- 



406 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

terested public. For example, take the novel. There are 
no principles by which the ideal novel can be denned for 
all time. Rather what we find is that the taste of one day- 
differs from the taste of another and that the least ex- 
pected taste often becomes the prevailing criterion. 1 

In science pragmatism is more nearly explicit. In such 
prominent contemporary men of science as Ernst Mach, 
Ostwald, Poincare*, Karl Pearson and many others we find 
the belief asserted that science has been largely conven- 
tional and accidental in its use or selection of fundamental 
notions and postulates. So-called laws of nature or so- 
called necessary principles are no more such than a loco- 
motive is a law of nature or an intellectually necessary 
instrument of hauling. Such laws and principles survive 
for much the same reasons that the locomotive survives, 
or the English language survives; that is, because they 
fill a certain office more satisfactorily than does any rival 
instrument or invention. In abstracto they have no im- 
portance or validity whatsoever. What importance they 
have, is derived from the fact that they solve our problems 
or do so more conveniently than do rival devices. The 
only matter of ultimate importance is the concrete prob- 
lem actually facing the human intellect together with 
the need, desire or curiosity impelling man to eliminate 
the problem by solving it in the psychologically easiest 
way. The resulting solution satisfies the immediate need 
and therefore passes for the present; but another genera- 
tion may become dissatisfied with the solution and seek 

1 The intellectualist may define the true goal of the novel: First 
comes the plot that tells a story that is impossible, then one that tells 
the improbable and next one that tells a story that is probable and 
finally as the ultimate of plot development comes the novel which 
tells the inevitable. But in the midst of this development comes a 
Robert Louis Stevenson with his romantic and improbable tales, 
wins the world's approval and defies successfully the rules laid down 
by the intellectuaHstic literary critic. 



PRESENT PHILOSOPHICAL TENDENCIES 407 

a new one. Thus science is ever changing her solutions, 
her fundamental notions and postulates to suit the imme- 
diate and therefore temporary need. The entire system 
of scientific theory is relative to the practical exigencies 
of the hour and never attains some absolute or fixed goal 
called by the intellectualist the truth. 

Other places in which pragmatism is nowadays espe- 
cially noticeable are in moral theory, jurisprudence, 
politics, and educational theory. Probably no age has had 
less definitely an explicit moral code than our own, or 
less confidence in the finality of such a code; and yet we 
are morally superior, there are good reasons to believe, 
to any preceding age in such general traits as humaneness, 
socialization, antagonism to privilege, and self-restraint. 
In other words, our morality seems to be less a general 
theory and more an array of solutions of concrete moral 
problems. The same is true, if I mistake not, of our po- 
litical life and practice. Party politics are remarkably 
deficient in abstract principles and correspondingly rich 
in platforms offering solutions of special pressing social 
and political problems. So much so is this the case that 
the strict party man is often puzzled what principle his 
party does stand for. For example, the liberal party of 
England is remarkably different from the same party 
fifty years ago, moving from its old individualism toward 
socialism, as Mr. Hobhouse explains in his book on Lib- 
eralism, under the pressure of concrete special political 
and social problems. How utterly naive Herbert Spencer 
seems to-day to the English liberal! Furthermore in both 
moral and political theory aside from general practice 
pragmatism is showing itself even more openly. There is 
a distinct distrust of "the simple solution of complex 
problems." Even socialistic literature is becoming more 
lenient in its demands for all or none; and is distinctly 
less Utopian. The motto " sufficient unto the day is the 



408 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

evil thereof" implicit in this branch of theory indicates, 
if I mistake not, a growing sense of the immense com- 
plexity of human life and a corresponding distrust of 
general theory; it seems to brand moral codes and general 
political theories as absurdly naive. In jurisprudence 
there is again, if I am not misled, a growing restlessness 
toward the intellectualistic system of the traditional law. 
On the one hand is a manufacture of statutes too fast 
for the jurist to keep up the pace, with a hidden but proba- 
bly rapid change of legal principle. On the other hand, 
is a restlessness against the academic legal tradition and 
against the academic jurist evident not merely among the 
public but in the law schools. There is movement away 
from what is left of the doctrine of the natural rights of 
man and toward the doctrine that society has to solve as 
best it can the concrete legal problems which it actually 
faces; and there seems to be a growing sense that the true 
maker of legal history is and always has been the practical 
need of the time, that law is not some universally valid 
system alike for all ages, climes and nations, but that it 
is the outcome of the struggle in each environment to meet 
the pressing practical problem forced upon society. Fi- 
nally, in education a marked rebellion is evident against 
the merely academic curriculum. Learning for its own 
sake is disappearing. Learning for the sake of the particu- 
lar station in life the pupil is to occupy and teaching so 
that what is taught may be used, are distinctly character- 
istic of the great changes brought to pass in the schools of 
Europe and America in recent decades. Consider the 
developing and multiplying of technical schools, the strug- 
gle against the older traditional classical and philosophical 
curriculum and the entrance of utilitarian subjects into 
most curricula. Even in religion, less is thought to-day 
than ever before in modern times about abstract theology 
and differences in creed and more is thought about con- 



PRESENT PHILOSOPHICAL TENDENCIES 409 

crete piety, concrete holiness and individual consecration 
to noble causes. If I mistake not, never before in the his- 
tory of man have thoughtful men been the pragmatists 
they are to-day and never before have they held prag- 
matism as a genuinely explicit philosophy to the degree 
they do in our times. 

For further study read: 

Schiller, F. C. S., art. Pragmatism, Encycl. Brit., 11th ed.; 

and "Axioms and Postulates" in Personal Idealism (ed. 

by Sturt), 1902; 
James, W., Pragmatism, 1907; 
Moore, A. W., Pragmatism and Its Critics, 1910. 
For more extensive study read: 

James, W., The Meaning of Truth, 1909; 

Schiller, F. C. S., Humanism, 1903; Studies in Humanism, 

1907; Plato or Protagoras?, 1908; 
Bawden, H. H., The Principles of Pragmatism, 1910; 
Dewey, J., Studies in Logical Theory, 1910; 
Dewey, J. and E., Schools of To-morrow, 1915; 
Dewey and others, Creative Intelligence, 1917; 
Mach, E. (transl. McCormack), Science of Mechanics, 

chapter IV, section IV; 
Mach, E. (transl. McCormack), Popular Scientific Lectures, 

186-235; 
Poincare, H., The Foundations of Science, The Science 

Press, 1913. 

7. The new realism. — To the question: To what extent 
is recent and present philosophic thought subjectivistic? 
no precise answer can be given. However, it can be said 
that most thoughtful men are Cartesian dualists. If as 
such they face squarely the problem of phenomenalism 
they divide into three groups: first, those who with Des- 
cartes believe that science can infer the nature of the phys- 
ical, or non-mental world; second, the agnostic phenome- 
nalists who believe that science can tell us nothing about a 



410 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

world beyond the world actually perceived by our senses; 
and third, the idealists who have so far outgrown their 
Cartesianism as to deny the existence of a world transcend- 
ing experience and who therefore deny dualism and the 
cogency of its phenomenalistic problem. The first of these 
groups which we may call Cartesian phenomenalists, is 
not only by far the largest but the most truly representa- 
tive group among philosophical men of science. The 
second of these groups has many members and, among 
these, thinkers whose names are known the intellectual 
world over. The third group which includes the followers 
of Berkeley, the so-called subjective idealists, and the 
followers of the early German idealists, the so-called ob- 
jective idealists, is the smallest of these groups of Carte- 
sians, but has among its members also men recognized 
as great contemporary thinkers. Finally, besides these 
three groups of Cartesians there is a still smaller group of 
thinkers who believe that we must go back beyond Des- 
cartes and beyond the Greeks and study again the whole 
problem of the mental and of the relation of the knowing 
mind to its object. These thinkers are called neo-realists. 1 
At least two lines of argument are followed in the 
thought of these realists in their protest against the tra- 
ditional way of conceiving the mental. First, Cartesian 
dualism has been thought through during the past three 
hundred years and has been shown to end in absurdity. Sec- 
ond, this ancient dualism and its conception of the mental 
has come to the modern thinker from the ancient world and 

1 The movement is so young and so untried by the test of history 
that I hesitate to give it a place in a brief and general account of 
contemporary philosophic thought. However, since the problem is 
philosophically so important and the difficulties of Cartesianism are 
so keenly felt, and since the very foundations of one of the most 
important general sciences, namely psychology, are in question, the 
issue deserves a place even in our brief account of contemporary 
thought. 



PRESENT PHILOSOPHICAL TENDENCIES 411 

is not based upon an open-minded study of the facts in the 
light of modern science. This older conception of the men- 
tal presupposes the notions of substance and cause as these 
notions were used in Greek thought; whereas modern 
science has been outgrowing both notions. Therefore, if 
a new way of conceiving the mental is to be thought out 
on the basis of modern science, it must be done in terms 
of the fundamental notions of modern as opposed to 
ancient science. Let us examine in order each of these 
lines of argument. 

The neo-realist believes that Cartesian dualism and its 
resulting subjectivism have been tried by history and have 
been reduced to absurdity. In the first place, dualism 
leads directly either to the absurdity of agnosticism or to 
the absurdity of parallelism. If you grant the dualism of 
the typical Cartesian, some of the keenest thinkers of 
the past two hundred years show you that the non-mental 
world and the world of our experience, the world of sen- 
sation, are separated by an impassable gulf. The objects 
that we can observe are by hypothesis mental and the 
mind is quite without any logical or scientific postulate 
that will enable us to deduce from these mental contents 
a world which by hypothesis quite transcends these con- 
tents. Thus you are left with the doctrine that you can 
know the world of possible experience but that the other 
world, the non-mental world postulated in your original 
hypothesis, is completely unknowable. The realist asks: 
How can you then fail to suspect the original hypothesis? 
But, let us assume with other Cartesians that the world 
of mind and matter are knowable. Then we have also a 
verdict rendered by some of the keenest thinkers of the 
past three hundred years, a verdict which decides that the 
two worlds, the world of mind and the world of matter, 
cannot interact. Matter can act only upon matter, for 
energy in its transformation must remain energy. That is, 



412 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

the world of physical science is a closed system from which 
energy cannot depart and to which energy cannot be 
added. For such thinkers the mental becomes a mere 
epiphenomenon or a parallel but non-interacting aspect 
of some unknown substance, thing or system of which the 
physical is the other aspect. If you then start with 
Descartes you presuppose a world of minds and material 
particles all interacting; but if you stay a Cartesian and 
think the matter through, you end believing in two non- 
interacting worlds, or systems. The neo-realist accordingly 
asks: Does not this parallelism seem the reductio ad ab- 
surdum of the initial Cartesian assumptions? Does it 
not indicate the need of investigating anew and without 
any traditional bias the very notion of the mental inherited 
by modern science? 

In the second place, the one remaining way of escape 
for the Cartesian which history records, namely, idealism, 
has also been tried and found wanting. With Berkeley 
or with Hegel you can admit the inadequacy of Cartesian 
dualism and become a Cartesian monist by showing that 
the world of experience conceived still as a mental world 
is the only world that exists. In other words, starting 
with the Cartesian notion of the mental you can show that 
only the mental exists. Against the idealist the realist 
brings two charges. First, the idealist has had one hun- 
dred years and more in which to win the scientific world 
and has failed to convert this world. Of course, this failure 
may be due not to the inadequacy of idealism but to the 
philosophical obtuseness of even the intellectual! Second, 
the idealist brings us back to the world from which all 
Cartesians start. He moves in a circle. If all is mind, 
there is a mental-material world and a mental-mental 
world. That is to say, physics and chemistry, the idealist 
is careful to tell us, remain as legitimate sciences. And 
what do they study? Of course the physical world. 



PRESENT PHILOSOPHICAL TENDENCIES 413 

Hence the mental world, the only real world, includes two 
worlds, the same as ever, the mental and the material 
worlds of common sense and of science. We have still on 
our hands then all the old problems that idealism claimed 
to solve. We have still to decide how to define and to dis- 
tinguish the mental and the physical, how to account for 
their interaction, and how to explain that the mind can 
know such a disparate system as the physical. As far as 
psychology is concerned are we not precisely where we 
started, back with Descartes? 

Let us next follow the second line of realistic argument. 
Science, since Galilei, has been outgrowing the notion 
cause and has been substituting for it the mathematical 
notion function. Consider the following simple illustra- 
tions of what the mathematician means by a function. 
The length of the circumference of a circle is a function 
of the radius; for, as the radius is more or less in length, 
so stage for stage (or in one to one correspondence) is the 
circumference. The amount of pressure that has to be 
exerted upon a lever is a function of the position of the 
fulcrum. The distance the water from a garden hose will 
carry is a function of the angle at which the nozzle is held. 
What then does the mathematician mean by function? 
Merely that there are two series, and that for each value 
or stage in the one there is a corresponding value or stage 
in the other. For each radius there is a corresponding 
circle. Or given one value you always get another or 
corresponding value or given one magnitude you always 
get a corresponding magnitude. In short, a function is 
but a mathematical way of describing a certain relation 
between the entities that vary in one to one correspond- 
ence. To come at once to the point, as modern science 
advances, this notion of the functional relation is super- 
seding altogether the ancient and even pre-historic notion 
of cause. The notion of cause is probably due to our 



414 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

kinesthetic feelings such as we have when we push, pull, 
twist and bend. We feel ourselves as doers, as powers, as 
causes, or as forces and have peopled nature with these 
ghosts. We think of dynamite bursting or tearing the 
rock apart as we tear paper. It is a doer, a cause, a giant 
in disguise. David Hume analyzed this notion of cause 
and showed that we do not apprehend any such relation 
between a cause and its effect. Rather what we apprehend 
is precisely what the mathematician means by function. 
A radius does not make the circle or do anything muscular 
to lengthen it. The position of a fulcrum or the size of a 
wheel or the angle at which the nozzle of a hose is held are 
each and all agents in this world of ours. If anything does, 
or causes or forces, they do so; and yet they are lifeless, 
motionless, non-muscular entities. They are merely 
geometrical entities, merely mathematical relations. Now, 
as science advances, the so-called causes resolve themselves 
into these functional relations, that is, the more we learn 
about the objects and events of nature the more these 
relations stand out in relief and the quicker the causes 
and forces of our barbaric and prehistoric ways of think- 
ing disappear. Nature becomes an indefinitely complex 
cobweb whose minute threads are, in the mathematical 
sense of the word, functions. 

If then in solving the problem: How do mind and body 
interact? we no longer conceive them to be connected as 
two substances causing changes of state in one another, we 
have but to seek the functional relations holding between 
the two systems. These relations can be discovered by 
experimental research and are not matters to be debated 
by rationalistic speculation. They are relations that can 
be observed and do not involve hidden substances. Thus 
the old problem of the interaction of mind and body disappears 
altogether. No doubt research will find that some func- 
tional relations do not hold between the mental and the 



PRESENT PHILOSOPHICAL TENDENCIES 415 

physical but hold solely between parts of the body as a 
chemical-physical machine; and this will then prove to be 
the half-truth hidden in the at present widely held doctrine 
of non-interaction. On the other hand, other functional 
relations will be found to hold between the two systems, 
and this in turn will prove to be the half-truth hidden in 
the older Cartesian doctrine that mind and body interact. 
Indeed, the realist believes, many of these functional re- 
lations have already been discovered and already constitute 
a large part of the results of physiological psychology. 

An objection similar to that made against the notion, 
cause, can be made against the notion, substance. To 
ordinary thought there are the many stuffs of which a 
thing can be composed, such as, wood, stone, iron, water, 
fat or bone. 1 Moreover, the stuff of which a thing is 
composed is ordinarily thought to explain its behavior 
or its so-called properties. It is strong because it is steel, 
it burns because it is wood. It is powerful because it is 
dynamite, or he is strong because he is muscular and he 
is a mighty leader because of his iron will. For rigorous 
scientific thought all such notions belong in the same 
group as fairies, ghosts, giants, magic and other creatures 
of pre-scientific speculation. For science things are what 
they are, do what they do, have the properties they pos- 
sess, because of their structure. And if we ask what we mean 
by structure, we are told, relations between parts, or or- 
ganization. Thus the solar system behaves as it does or 
has the properties it has, because of its organization. 
A smoke ring, a musical note, a locomotive and a vessel 
filled with gas are each and all simple illustrations of the 
nature of things being no more than their structure in dis- 

1 To the Greek thinker all of these seemed reducible to the four 
elements, earth, air, fire and water. To the thinker of the seven- 
teenth century, they seemed reducible to matter, or to matter and 
spirit, or to the "ultimate substance." 



416 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

guise. And this means in turn that science has abandoned 
or is abandoning the notion of substance and the search for 
the substance of things. 1 

These two philosophical changes taking place in modern 
thought 2 are the very principle, if I mistake not, of the 
new realism, which endeavors to solve the old problem 
of mind and knowledge by discarding the notions 
cause and substance inherited by modern thought from 
the ancient world and by applying the modern scien- 
tific notions of structure and function to the facts of 
mental life as science does to the facts of the physical 
world. 

From prehistoric barbarism man has found in himself 
a twofold nature, body and soul. The body has its proper- 
ties and can do its acts because it is one sort of a substance. 
In contrast, the soul has markedly different properties 
and does markedly different acts, because the soul is of 
quite another substance. The paradoxes and absurdities 
to which this dualism leads have been pointed out. But 
it can be attacked directly. The human mind is not an 
ultimate, it is far from being a substance, as a mere matter 
of fact. It has a structure and this structure is gradually 
being discovered. It has parts, for disease can injure 
some and not others, education can alter some and not 
others. It differs from man to man and these differences 
are in part due to heredity. In some respects a man can be 
mentally like his mother, in other respects like his father. 
Again, the human mind is not an ultimate, for in part 

1 The chemist is aware that his so-called elements are not stuffs in 
the old sense but are differently organized matter; and the physicist 
is aware in turn that his matter is not a stuff but either an organiza- 
tion of the ether or another name for certain mathematical values 
such as mass. 

2 Already clearly present in the attack of Bishop Berkeley against 
the Cartesian rationalistic mechanical conception of nature and in 
the positivism of David Hume. 



PRESENT PHILOSOPHICAL TENDENCIES 417 

at least it has been explained. In general, this explana- 
tion is biological. As our bodies are fitted for our environ- 
ment, so are our minds. As our bodies are inherited, so 
are mental traits. As our muscles are fitted to perform 
certain acts, so have we the impulses, the satisfactions and 
desires leading to the requisite muscular contractions. 
Use of any mental trait strengthens that trait. Disuse 
weakens it. Mental acts leading to satisfaction are more 
liable to be done again, and mental acts leading to annoy- 
ance or pain tend to disappear. In general, the physiology 
of the nervous system is throwing more and more light 
upon the working and development and training of the 
mind. Indeed, the more science learns regarding the mind 
the more closely related are mind and body turning out 
to be and the more and more absurd is becoming the older 
dualism of body and mind. 

What then does the realist offer instead of this tradi- 
tional dualism? The realist urges that the belief in two 
sorts of stuff, the mental and the physical, be discarded 
and that we learn to think of both the mental and the 
physical in terms of relations, structures or organizations 
having many members in common. For example, the 
physical chair and the chair I perceive, are in part one and 
the same entity. We call the chair physical when we as- 
sert certain of its relations, its weight, its ability to reflect 
light, to burn, to resist the pressure of our bodies, and to 
move through space. We call the chair our mental state 
when we attend to our behavior and perceive that the 
chair is a part of the situation to which we are responding. 
For example, we avoid running into the chair, we give 
money to purchase the chair, we go to another room in 
order to get the chair, or though the chair is not at hand 
we respond to it in a way called talking about the chair. 
In other words, one and the same entity can be both physi- 
cal and mental. It is physical in those relations studied 



418 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

by the physical sciences and it is mental as part of the 
situation to which we as behaving organisms are respond- 
ing. Thus the difference between the physical and the 
mental is a difference solely of relations and not a difference 
of stuff or of entity. 1 

Knowing likewise is a relation, a certain type of response 
of a living organism, and is not, as the Cartesian pictures 
it, a reaching out of a mind in one world over into another 
world beyond a bottomless chasm in order to grasp or 
apprehend the contents of that world. Knowing is not 
some transcendent act beyond the reach of science but is 
as much an event in the world about us as is the blowing 
wind or the falling stone and as such is as readily studied 
as any of nature's complex happenings. Entities pass 
in and out of our field of knowledge precisely as objects 
pass in or out of the field of things to which an animal is 
responding, indeed as aforesaid knowing is but a complex 
type of behaving. The teacher readily ascertains whether 
or not the child knows its lesson, and does so by putting 
the child in a certain situation and by then watching the 
child's response. I learn whether or not I still know my 
calculus by taking some problems from the old text- 

1 The realist finds many other worlds, or logical systems besides the 
two of Descartes, e. g., he finds the world of pure mathematics, the 
world of art and the world of morality. The ultimate stuff, or system 
of entities to which we come when we regard things merely as objects of 
discourse, is not either matter or mind or any other specific stuff but 
merely stuff in general, mere being. For example, what is red, or what 
is a noise merely as a possible object of discourse? The answer is 
not "something physical" or "something mental" but merely "some- 
thing." This ultimate stuff whose only attribute is " being a possible 
object of discourse" has been called by the realists "the neutral stuff 
or the neutral universe." Thus the realist differs from the Cartesian, 
who finds in every object of discourse "a mental state" or "an expe- 
rience," by maintaining that such a mere object of discourse is not 
specifically a member of any system except "mere being," or "mere 
object of discourse." 



PRESENT PHILOSOPHICAL TENDENCIES 419 

book and trying to solve them. This solving is distinctly 
a set of responses. 

The subjective is similarly defined by the realist. A 
dog's world, that is, the world to which the dog responds, 
is but a small part of the total universe as the psychologist 
readily shows, that is to say, the dog's world is but a selec- 
tion out of the total universe of our discourse, a selection 
made by the dog's nervous system. So man's world is a 
selection and science can say many things regarding the 
sort of selection it is. Man has a human world, and he 
has such a world in precisely the same sense in which a 
dog can be said to have a dog's world. No doubt man's 
ability to know the universe is limited by the character of 
his nervous system; and therefore man's world and the 
universe are not to be identified, though what man knows 
belongs to that universe and much that the dog knows 
belongs also to our human world. Again man's sensory 
world is not the whole world any more than is the sensory 
world of a blind man all of our world. It too is a selec- 
tion and a very complicated one which science needs to 
study and to explain and which we to-day understand 
only in small part. However, we are not entirely ignorant. 
That our eyes are optical instruments and as such select 
in part what we are capable of responding to is trite in- 
formation. That we respond to things in perspective 
somewhat as the photographic camera does and that this 
is due to the sort of eyes and nervous system we have, in 
short, that we select optical projections of a certain sort 
instead of the entity whose optical projections they are 
said to be, is also apparent and has its explanation. 
Finally, that our nervous systems are not perfectly ad- 
justed to the total world to which we need to respond, 
that our inborn or acquired responses to the world to which 
we are capable of responding are imperfect, is only too 
evident. Error is such an imperfect response. In short, 



420 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

all of these factors make man's world in part a subjective 
world. That is to say, man's world is subjective in being 
a selected world. It is subjective because man's responses 
are but imperfectly adapted to the world that concerns his 
welfare. 

Finally, man's world is subjective for a third reason, 
because the nervous system itself contributes to man's world. 
The nervous system is a complex physical-chemical in- 
strument and, precisely as other physical instruments, 
alters and contributes to the world of which it is a part. 
For example, mirrors contribute optical projections, 
prisms contribute spectra, magnets contribute magnetic 
fields, and whistles and musical strings contribute un- 
dulations. So also nervous systems, in ways but little 
understood, contribute to the totality of existence. Thus 
the contents of our dreams and of some of our illusions are 
subjective in the sense that the nervous system is one of 
the conditions of their existence. But this fact does not 
prevent some of these subjective contents being physical, 
even as truly physical as is the image in the mirror. How- 
ever, what they are is a special problem of science and 
not, as for the Cartesian, a general problem of philosophy. 
They are not a mental stuff to be recognized as such by 
the mere glance of a philosopher. Rather they are like a 
spectrum to be elaborately investigated by experimental 
science and to have their nature determined by research. 

Thus the neo-realists urge that the nature of the mental 
be defined in terms of relations and functions and no longer 
in terms of causes and stuffs. They point out that doing 
so is but to adopt in psychology that general positivism 
to be seen in mathematical physics and more and more 
extensively throughout the field of modern science. They 
claim that by so doing the mental can be sharply distin- 
guished from the physical, the objective from the sub- 
jective. Finally, they maintain that the paradoxes of 



PRESENT PHILOSOPHICAL TENDENCIES 421 

phenomenalism, idealism, and parallelism can be eliminated 
and the nature of knowing stated in terms which make 
knowing, what it undoubtedly is, a proper object of scien- 
tific and experimental research. 1 

For further study read: 

The New Realism, 1912, 2-42, 303-373, 471-483; 

James, W., Essays in Radical Empiricism, 1912, 1-154; 

Watson, J. B., Behavior, An Introduction to Comparative 
Psychology, 1-28. 
For more extensive study read: 

Holt, E. B., The Concept of Consciousness, 1914; 

Spaulding, E. G., The New Rationalism (forthcoming); 

The New Realism, 1912; 

Mach, E. (transl. Williams and Waterlow), Analysis of 
Sensations, chapter III. 

8. Social democracy. — In the immediately preceding 
sections we have studied the vast changes recent decades 
have witnessed taking place in modern scientific thought. 
In this section we are to study the equally vast changes 
in the economic, political, social and moral life of the 
western world during the past one hundred and especially 
the past fifty years. These changes can be summed up 
in the phrase, the rise of social democracy. 2 That is to say, 
during the past fifty and more years the western world 
has become markedly more democratic in its political, 
social and moral life and has also become markedly more 
socialized. Both changes can be traced back to move- 
ments of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, es- 
pecially to the democratic movement in England during 

1 Part of this section has been taken from an article by the author, 
"The New Realism," in The Chronicle, September, 1916. 

2 In this section I am indebted directly to Professor J. H. Robin- 
son's An Outline of the History of the Intellectual Class in Western 
Europe, 1915. The field is so vast that this section has to be little 
more than a list of topics, a syllabus. 



422 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

these centuries and to the French Revolution. But neither 
change is the mere outcome of eighteenth century condi- 
tions, for the nineteenth century has witnessed the rise of 
new and powerful environmental factors which have revo- 
lutionized the entire economic life of the modern world. 
Indeed, it is no exaggeration to assert that if we say, "so 
recent a man as George Washington lived in much the 
same world as did Aristotle," we may consistently add, 
"but the man of to-day lives in another universe." This 
new universe is the product of an industrial revolution, 
the like of which man has never before witnessed. 

(a) The industrial revolution. — This industrial revolu- 
tion has been due to the use of iron and coal and to the 
discovery and development of steam and electrical machin- 
ery. It has brought into being the modern factory and 
the vast organization of labor employed in our large in- 
dustries, the great corporations that direct our economic 
enterprise, the exceeding large cities making our popula- 
tion half urban, and the means of easy, cheap and rapid 
intercommunication between almost all parts of the globe. 
It has increased our wealth enormously and therefore our 
leisure and our means for scientific research and for study 
and culture; and it has raised the standard of living of 
every class in the industrial nations. Not only has it 
brought close together the individual men of the same 
nation but it has made nations themselves more and more 
interdependent. It has opened a vast range of thought 
and endeavor to better mankind through the abolishing 
or reducing of poverty, ignorance, disease, crime and war. 
It has raised the hope and ideal of universal peace, and of 
the co-operation and federation of all nations. 

For more extensive study read: 

Byrn, E. W., Progress of Invention in the Nineteenth 
Centuiy; 



PRESENT PHILOSOPHICAL TENDENCIES 423 

Gibbiris, H. B., Economic and Industrial Progress of The 

Century, 1903; 
Wallace and others, The Progress of the Century, 1901; 
The Nineteenth Century, A Review of Progress (articles 

reprinted from the "N. Y. Evening Post"). 

(b) Democracy. — A new conception of democracy has 
arisen supplanting that of the eighteenth century. The 
" people" has come to mean every member of the nation; 
and the franchise has been extended until in some com- 
monwealths every normal adult has an equal right to be 
heard and to be represented in the government. Graft 
and special privilege, the dominating of the interests of 
special classes and hidden government have been markedly 
reduced; and government in the interest of all the people 
has markedly increased not only in political theory but 
also in actual political practice. Finally, governments 
have become far more responsive and more quickly re- 
sponsive to the thought and wishes of the people. 

For more extensive study read: 

Scherger, G. L., The Evolution of Modern Liberty, 1904; 
Rose, T. H., Rise of Democracy, 1897. 

(c) Socialism, the religion of industrial democracy. — 

The word socialism may be used in a broad and a narrow 
sense. In the broad sense, socialism is to-day a large part 
of the religion of every enlightened member of the demo- 
cratic nations. As an ideal it implies co-operation, social 
service, social efficiency, the universal sharing in the 
wealth, culture and progress of the nations by the mem- 
bers of the nation; it implies the bettering of all mankind 
individually and the merciful care of the helpless, the sick, 
the delinquent and the deficient; and it implies the pro- 
moting of the spirit of brotherhood and co-operation be- 
tween all peoples and the eliminating of the ancient preda- 



424 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

tory spirit of men and of nations, or rather, the redirecting 
of this predatory spirit so that men will exploit nature 
instead of exploiting one another. 

In the narrow sense, socialism is the name of a familiar 
social and economic doctrine and policy that would further 
revolutionize the industrial and political world. This 
socialistic movement is so thoroughly characteristic of 
the nineteenth century and of our time and has had among 
its members so many intellectual men, that its history 
belongs in the history of recent philosophic thought as 
truly as does the doctrine of evolution. 

As defined by Bonar, 1 "Socialism is that policy or 
theory which aims at securing by the action of the central 
democratic authority a better distribution, and, in due 
subordination thereunto, a better production of wealth 
than now prevails." "Modern socialism is (a) opposed 
to the policy of laissez faire, which aims at the least possi- 
ble interference with industrial competition between pri- 
vate persons or groups of persons, and (6) suspicious of a 
policy of mere regulation, which aims at close surveillance 
and control of the proceedings of industrial competitors, 
but would avoid direct initiative in production and direct 
attempts to level the inequalities of wealth. The leading 
idea of the socialist is to convert into general benefit what 
is now the gain of a few. He shares this idea with the 
anarchist, the positivist, the co-operator and other reform- 
ers; but, unlike them, to secure this end he would employ 
the compulsory powers of the sovereign state, or the powers 
of the municipality delegated by the sovereign." 

Socialism as a movement in this narrow sense, goes 
back to certain Utopian thinkers of the first half and 
middle of the nineteenth century in France and England. 
As a more scientific theory and policy it goes back to 
thinkers in Germany, influenced by Hegel's doctrine of 
1 Bonar, J., art. Socialism, Encycl. Brit., 11th ed. 



PRESENT PHILOSOPHICAL TENDENCIES 425 

the development of society, of whom Karl Marx (fl. c. 
1860) was the most prominent and influential. In recent 
decades it has become distinctly more scientific in that it 
is based upon an earnest study of economic science and 
economic, social and political facts. Yet as distinct from 
economic and political science, it still retains a marked 
rationalistic character and a spirit that may be called 
religious rather than scientific. As a movement its politi- 
cal influence in our time, especially in Europe, is powerful; 
and as a political party the number of its members has 
grown steadily until to-day it forms in a few European 
countries a genuine rival of other parties. Another aspect 
of great importance is its tendency to be an international 
movement with aims and policies opposed to the prevail- 
ing nationalism of our time. 

For further study read: 

Bonar, art. Socialism, Encycl. Brit., 11th ed.; 

MacDonald, J. M., The Socialist Movement (Home Uni- 
versity Library); 

Dewey and Tufts, Ethics, Part III. 
For more extensive study read: 

Kirkup, T., History of Socialism (new ed. by Pease), 1913; 

Patten, S., The New Basis of Civilization, 1907. 

(d) The new social and anthropological sciences. — As 

is to be expected in such an age as the present time has 
just been described to be, there has been during the past 
fifty years a great interest in and a vast development of 
those sciences that directly study man, society, health, 
education and wealth. This is to be seen, not merely in 
the growth and spread of research in the fields of ethnology, 
psychology, medicine, sanitation, education, economics, 
social and political science, and history, but also in the 
change within the traditional curricula of our colleges 
and universities giving a large place to these studies which 



426 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

formerly were all but unrepresented, and in the increas- 
ingly large number of students nowadays attracted to 
these subjects of study where but a few decades ago they 
were exceeding few. For example, it is hardly an exagger- 
ation to say that fifty per cent of American students and 
men of research are engaged as specialists in these fields 
of study. 

For more extensive study read: 

Ingram, J. K., History of Political Economy, 2d. ed., 1907; 
Small, A. W., The Meaning of Social Science, 1910; 
Haddon, History of Anthropology; 
Robinson, J. H., The New History, chapter III. 

(e) The readjustment of education to the new knowl- 
edge and to the new needs. — Two great transformations 
of the schools have taken place during the past fifty years 
especially, and these changes are not only related to the 
aforementioned change in our social world but are indica- 
tive of a vast philosophical or intellectual change. First, 
the schools have tended more and more to pass from the 
control and management of the church into the hands of 
the government and the public. Education has been more 
and more secularized. Second, the courses of study and 
the methods of instruction have changed radically. The 
educational ideal of the " liberal arts" and the " classics" 
and the confidence in abstract reasoning as a means of 
"training the mind" have in spite of opposition and 
tradition given place to a new conception of education and 
to a new educational policy. Whatever may be the dan- 
gers involved therein, education is becoming more and 
more utilitarian, more and more an attempt to train the 
child for the actual life before him and more and more 
an endeavor to take the child's actual inborn and acquired 
mental nature into consideration in the devising of methods 
and the selecting of the subjects of study. 



PRESENT PHILOSOPHICAL TENDENCIES 427 

For more extensive study read: 

Thorndike, E. L., Education, 1912; 

Dewey, J. and E., The Schools of To-morrow, 1915; 

Flexner, A., The American College, 1908. 

(f) The freeing of thought. — Finally, the process of 
democratizing society is to be seen in the further freeing 
of religious belief and scientific theory. It is becoming 
nearer and nearer to being true that a man may adopt 
any religious creed in which he honestly believes, that 
church and state are separating as two distinct social 
organizations, that religious faith carries therewith no legal 
disability, that the many religious denominations permit 
among their members greater latitude for honest individ- 
ual differences of belief, and that men are truly and com- 
pletely tolerant toward their fellowmen who hold other 
faiths. Again, it is becoming nearer and nearer to being 
true that the man of science may freely investigate, draw 
conclusions and publish the results of his research. Men 
are learning that theories are to be judged not as matters 
of personal or arbitrary choice, but as matters depending 
for their right to be upon facts, that theories are to be 
judged by fact, not by emotion or by tradition, and that 
truth even though unwelcome and destructive of old and 
sacred tradition is far better than error and far safer than 
ignorance. However far from complete philosophical 
freedom we may be, we are much nearer to such freedom 
than the modern w r orld has ever been before; and we are 
decidedly less fearful than were our ancestors of the con- 
sequences of such freedom. We are tending more and 
more to believe that man's inborn nature and intellectual 
capacities can be trusted in the long run to lead him surely 
to seek, to find and to revere the good, the true and the 
beautiful. If this belief is sound, there is far greater danger 
in the spirit of conservatism than in the spirit of radical- 



428 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

ism. Though the conservative may preserve the good 
there is, the radical alone can add to the good and eliminate 
the evil. The radical makes many mistakes and must be 
permitted to do so in the interest of progress, for he is the 
indispensable condition of progress. The better faith 
and the better knowledge cannot be got without risk and 
without price and without mistakes. They can be found 
only by men whose method of search is the trial and error 
method, the method to which all other methods of dis- 
covery and learning can be reduced. 

For further study read: 

Robinson, J. H., The New History, chapter VIII. 
For more extensive study read: 

Bury, History of the Freedom of Thought (Home University 
Library) ; 

Dickinson, G. L., Justice and Liberty, 1909; 

Mill, J. S., Liberty; 

Morley, J., On Compromise; 

Scherger, G. L., The Evolution of Modem Liberty, 1904. 



CHAPTER XXVIII 

CONCLUSION 

1. The complexity of our present intellectual life. — A 

detailed account of present philosophical tendencies would 
make quite evident the extreme complexity of our intel- 
lectual life; but even the highly general account just given 
must impress the thoughtful reader with this complexity. 
If we take a cross-section of the population of any western 
land and examine the intellectual life from the lowliest 
peasant to the master of science, we behold philosophical 
strata varying from the crude beliefs of prehistoric and 
prescientific man to the most enlightened beliefs man has 
ever possessed. If within the highest intellectual classes 
we take another cross-section, as it were at right angles 
to the former cross-section, we shall see again an equally 
complex array of philosophic belief varying from the 
extreme naturalism of one man to the extreme romanticism 
of another, from the extreme rationalism of some to the 
extreme empiricism and positivism of others, and from 
the extreme subjectivism of a few to the extreme objec- 
tivism of another small group. 

2. The central tendency man of to-day and the central 
tendency man of the intellectual class. — However, the 
averages or central tendencies of these classes are the data 
which especially interest the historian. How does the 
central tendency man differ to-day from the central tend- 
ency man of other ages? Doubtless, he is more naturalis- 
tic, less superstitious, less emotional and hysterical, and 
more intellectual. But we do well not to estimate the 

429 



430 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

difference to be so great as to place him far above the cen- 
tral tendency man of other ages. He has indeed tools, 
methods and customs that make him far more efficient; 
but it is a mistake to infer that these instruments of culture 
are thoroughly understood and have made a great differ- 
ence philosophically. What is rather true is that the 
intellectual classes are absolutely far larger and relatively 
somewhat larger than they have ever been before in human 
history. Again, the central tendencies of the intellectual 
classes are matters of great importance. Who these 
central tendency intellectual men are, is of course difficult 
to prove; but I believe that the average college student or 
alumnus is as high as these central tendency men. Any 
one well acquainted with the average college man knows 
only too well how easy it is to overestimate his philosophi- 
cal stature; but it is easy also to underestimate this stat- 
ure. He is not a Plato or an Aristotle, but he has absorbed 
an immense amount of modern philosophy. He has a 
superior cosmology; he has absorbed the chief lessons of 
modern naturalism though he is far from being a consistent 
naturalist; he is vaguely an evolutionist, an empiricist, 
pragmatist, and experimentalist; he is not above the 
Greeks as a Cartesian dualist though he is more of a sub- 
jectivist; and he is markedly a sentimentalist and a ro- 
manticist. If we take the much smaller group, the intel- 
lectual class in the narrowest sense, and seek its central 
tendencies, we shall find, if I mistake not, a decided natu- 
ralism, empiricism, pragmatism, experimentalism and 
Cartesian dualism, but also a growing tolerance and in- 
terest in romanticism. Eucken, James, and Bergson are 
receiving a different hearing to-day from what they would 
have got from the same class in the eighteenth century. 
3. The near future of present philosophical tendencies. 
— It does not seem venturesome to predict that the great 
philosophical movement of the twentieth century will be 



CONCLUSION 431 

an endeavor to combine and harmonize intellectualism 
and romanticism. Nor does it seem venturesome to pre- 
dict that the issue between religion and naturalism will be 
solved by the average twentieth century thinker through 
romanticism added to naturalism, or through some method 
of harmonizing the two. Regarding rationalism and sub- 
jectivism it is more venturesome to predict. Pragmatism 
and experimentalism are certainly growing tendencies of 
our intellectual life; and as long as the intellectual world 
about us is rapidly growing in information they seem liable 
to remain powerful tendencies. However, should there be 
a slowing down of the rate of successful scientific research 
or should the very increase of information force upon us 
the systematizing and organizing of our vast information, 
then rationalism will no doubt become again a powerful 
tendency. If I mistake not, we see such a tendency in 
mathematics to-day. Regarding subjectivism my own 
conviction is that Cartesian dualism and the subjectivisms 
that are its outgrowth are becoming a greater and greater 
embarrassment both to science in general and to psychol- 
ogy in particular. If this is true, the twentieth century 
may solve a philosophical problem that has embarrassed 
science since the days of Democritus. 

4. The individual and the group mind. — The great 
lesson that general history and the history of philosophy 
are to-day teaching is that culture is the product of both 
the individual and the group mind. We inherit from the 
group our philosophy as we inherit our laws or our social 
conventions and only gradually does the exceptional in- 
dividual emancipate himself from the dogmatic blindness 
of the mob. But even this power to emancipate himself 
must come from his environment. It must come from 
great economic and social changes, from great discoveries 
of new truths, or from an environment that encourages 
individualism and individual variation. Whether or not 



432 THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 

the true spirit of freedom and respect for individualism 
will continue to increase, is more difficult to judge. Per- 
haps our modern democratic tendencies conceal a great 
danger, the mob mind and its mediocrity. Will democracy 
be wise enough to value the true freedom of the excep- 
tional individual, the freedom of the great thinker? Can 
she be taught what she owes to these men in past genera- 
tions? Can she learn who gave her the civilization she 
possesses? 

However, the group mind has also its virtue. The in- 
dividual is liable to be one-sided, the group is many-sided. 
Life is extremely complex and its complex problems re- 
quire complex solutions. The tendency of the individual 
is to oversimplify these problems and to offer simple and 
unworkable solutions. Tradition and instinct are therefore 
often wiser than man's intellect. Thus whatever be the 
philosophy of the decades to come it should be many- 
sided and complex; and no doubt the group will in- 
sist upon this condition with or against the individual 
thinker. 

5. The two aspects of man's intellectual progress. — 
History as the story of the progress of man has two 
aspects. First, progress is the reorganization of man's in- 
stinctive nature so that it is better adjusted to the environ- 
ment taken as a constant. Second, progress is the remodel- 
ling of man's environment so that it enables man to satisfy 
better his total inborn nature taken in turn as a constant. 
Intellectual progress as a human enterprise has two sim- 
ilar aspects. First, intellectual progress is the thinking 
through what we already know so that we know it better, 
more consistently and more profoundly. Second, intel- 
lectual progress is an ever increasing body of information 
that is undoing the thought of the older generations and 
calling for new explanations and new philosophical foun- 
dations. Our modern pragmatism has taught us not to 



CONCLUSION 433 

expect finality, and nothing in the spirit of our age or in 
its complex philosophical thought suggests that a final 
philosophy is near at hand. Rather our spirit of adventure 
and our experimentalism make us pleased to believe that 
the goal of history is still far, far away. 



INDEX 



Abelard, 272 

Analysis, the increase of this 
ability as a result of growing 
civilization, 23f. 

Anatomical science, its origin 
and development in Greece, 
87, 116, 158 

Animism, and immortality, 133; 
and science, 100f.; and the 
world-soul, 147ff.; as part of 
popular philosophy, 44; in 
medieval thought, 251; in 
modern psychology, 332, 400; 
its definition, 41f.; its origin, 
41ff. 

Anselm, 272 

Apollonius, 181 

Apologists, Christian, 226 

Archimedes, 181 

Aristarchus, 180 

Aristotle, 150ff., 180; and medi- 
eval philosophy, 260ft\; and 
Platonism, 151ff. 

Arius, 225 

Associationism, 329, 333f . 

Astronomy, in modern age, 
286ff.; origin and development 
in Greece, 84f ., 116, 142, 158ft\, 
179f. 

Athanasius, 225 

Atomic theory, its cosmology, 
104f.; its origin and develop- 
ment in Greece, 88fl\, 95ff.; 
its philosophical significance, 
105ft\; its principles, 102ff. 



Augustine, Saint, 233ff., 309, 
327 

Bacon, Francis, 307; and the 
experimental method, 314ff. 
Bergson, 379f. 
Berkeley, 309f., 312, 349ff. 

Christian philosophy, 189£f., 
223ff.; and modern rational- 
ism, 323ff.; its relation to 
Greek thought, 188fi\, 228fi\, 
231ff. 

Christianity, 223ff.; in middle 
ages, 250ff. 

Civilization, causes of rise and 
growth of, 2ff.; causes of the 
slowness of progress in prim- 
itive, 6f.; its recency, 1; prim- 
itive beliefs and customs the 
source of later, 7ff. 

Copernicus, 288f . 

Curiosity, its broadening as the 
result of civilization, 22f . 

Darwin, 311, 362ff. 
Decadence, in Greece, 164ff.; its 

nature, 165f. 
Deism, 325f. 
Democritus, 124fi\, 195f.; and 

modern thought, 310f., 346 
Descartes, 294, 309, 312, 322, 

328, 346, 348; and rationalism, 

317ff. 
Diaphantus, 181 
Discovery, Age of, 275£f . 



435 



436 



INDEX 



Dualism, Cartesian, 330, 342, 
410ff. 

Eleaticism, its origin and devel- 
opment in Greece, 93, 98f., 
137f., 145f. 

Emotions, effect of civilization 
upon man's, 24f . 

Empiricism, see Positivism 

Enlightenment, period of , llOff.; 
in Greece, llOff.; in modern 
age, 308ft\, 337ff. 

Environment, its influence upon 
man's civilization, 3f . 

Epicureanism, 186f., 192ff. 

Epicurus, 192 

Ethics, in Greece, 118, 129ff., 
137ff., 160ff., 192ff.; in middle 
ages, 270; in modern age, 
334f., 357f., 366ff., 370ff., 
402ff., 421ff. 

Euclid, 142, 181 

Evolution, doctrine of, 312, 
356ff. 

Experimentalism, 401f . 

Fichte, 309, 370f . 

Forms, doctrine of, 91, 134ff., 
143ff., 154ff. 

Freedom of thought, and mod- 
ern rationalism and natural- 
ism, 336; at present time, 
427f.; influence of civilization 
in increasing, 27f . 

Galilei, 289f.; and the experi- 
mental method, 314f. 

Geography, in modern age, 
283ff. ; origin and development 
in Greece, 85, 178f. 

Geology, and the doctrine of 
evolution, 361f. 

Gnosticism, 229f . 

Godwin, 307f . 



Gorgias, 124 

Greece, its golden age, 68f.; the 
originator of science, 60fi\, 
67ff., 84ff. 

Greek philosophy, Athenian 
period of, 109ft\; contrasted 
with modern, 246ff.; early 
period of, 78fi\; its periods, 
69f., 78f.; its relation to 
Greek religion, 74ff., 78f.; its 
two currents, 75f . 

Greek religion, 71ff.; its in- 
fluence upon Greek philos- 
ophy, 73ff., 78f. 

Gregory, 236f . 

Group mind, and animism, 43; 
and the individual, 431f.; its 
influence upon custom and 
thought, 16f., 25ff., 35, 46f. 

Harmony, the pre-established, 

331 
Hartley, 333 
Harvey, 294, 328 
Hegel, 309, 355, 375ff. 
Hellenistic period, 164ff. 
Hellenistic philosophy, 173ff., 

185ff. 
Hellenistic rehgion, 167ff. 
Heracleitus, 95fl\, 200f. 
Hipparchus, 181 
Hippocrates, 116f., 183 
History, its major periods, 59f. 
Hobbes, 322, 328, 333 
Hume, 333, 349ff. 
Huyghens, 290, 294 

Idealism, 312, 345f.; objective, 

353ff. 
Ideas, doctrine of, see Forms 
Imitation, influence of civiliza- 
tion upon this form of learn- 
ing, 21f. 



INDEX 



437 



Inductive method, see Method, 

the experimental 
Intellectualism, modern, 304ff., 

402ff. 
Ionic philosophy and science, 

and Greek religion, 74ff.; in 

the early period, 88ff. 

John of Salisbury, 258f . 
Joule, 294 

Kant, 291, 309, 312, 349ff., 370f. 

Kepler, 290 

Knowledge, as a result of trial 
and error learning, 32f.; spec- 
ulative, 33ff.; the history of 
its growth, 12f . 

Knowledge, theory of; and the 
new realism, 409ff., in the 
modern age, 350£f. 

Laplace, 290f., 322 
Leeuwenhoek, 294 
Leucippus, 100, 102 
Locke, 307, 312, 333, 346, 348, 

350ff. 
Logic, origin and development in 

Greece of, 86, 93, 112f., 143fi\, 

153f. 
Lyell, 362ff. 

Mach, 406 

Magic, its definition, 39f.; its 

origin, 40; its survival in 

civilization, 7ff.; the part it 

plays in human life and 

thought, 39f . 
Man, his prehistory, Iff.; the 

influence of the exceptional, 

4ff. 
Manichaeism, 230, 234f. 
Man's mental nature, changes 

wrought by civilization in, 

20ff. 



Marx, 424f . 

Materialism, in modern thought, 

332 
Mathematics, and philosophy, 

146f.; in modern age, 292f.; 

in nineteenth century, 39 If.; 

its origin and development in 

Greece, 86f., 116, 142f., 181f. 
Medical science, origin and 

development in Greece of, 92, 

116f., 182f. 
Medieval philosophy, 261ff. 
Medieval thought, factors in, 

252ff.; its development, 244fi\, 

250ff. 
Method, the experimental, 314f .; 

and modern science, 319f., 

401f. 
Method, the problem of scien- 
tific, 314ff. 
Mithraism, 230 
Mysticism, see Romanticism 
Myth, its nature and origin, 44f . 

Natural selection, doctrine of, 

364ff. 
Naturalism, in modern thought, 

321ff., 398ff. 
Nature, in contrast to custom, 

113f.; law of, 176, 199, 218fi\; 

the notion, 88 
Neoplatonism, 188f., 201ff., 

237ff.; and Christianity, 231ff. 

and St. Augustine, 233ff.; in 

middle ages, 259 
Newton, 290, 294, 322 
Nominalism, 268ff. 

Occasionalism, 330f . 
Ostwald, 406 

Parallelism, 331f. 

Parmenides, 86, 90, 98f., 145 



438 



INDEX 



Paul, Saint, 224f. 

Pearson, K., 406 

Petrarch, 281 

Phenomenalism, 125ff., 312, 
341ff.; influence in past two 
centuries, 356ff. 

Philolaus, 133 

Philosophy, a group phenom- 
enon, 17f.; defined, 14ff.; its 
history, 12ff., 59ft\, 432f.; the 
causes of its growth, 16ff., 
432f. 

Physical science, in Greece, 95ff., 
158ff.; in modern age, 293ff.; 
in nineteenth century, 392ff. 

Physiology, and modern ra- 
tionalism, 328f . ; in Greece, 87, 
116; in modern age, 294; in 
nineteenth century, 394ff. 

Plato, 139ff. 

Platonic realism, 147; in medie- 
val thought, 263ff. 

Plotinus, 206ff. 
» Poincare", 406 

Political and social science, and 
modern rationalism, 334f.; in 
Greece, 113f.; in modern age, 
296ff.; in nineteenth century, 
397, 425f . 

Positivism, 312, 342ff., 350ff.; 
influence in past two cen- 
turies, 356ff. 

Pragmatism, 120ff.; in present 
thought, 402ff. 

Prehistory, its great length, Iff.; 
its survival within civiliza- 
tion, 9ff., 12f. 

Present philosophical tendencies, 
384ff., 429ff. 

Primitive civilization, its sur- 
vival within later civilization, 
9ff., 12f.; the source of later 
civilization, 7ff., 60ff. 



Primitive knowledge and 
thought, and religion, 49ff., 
164ff. ; their relation to science, 
36ff., 49ff., 78f.; their survival 
in modern age, 302ff.; their 
definition, 31ff.; their three 
levels, 32ff. 

Protagoras, 121ff. 

Psychology, and modern ra- 
tionalism, 329ff. ; and phenom- 
enalism, 356f.; and the new 
realism, 409ff.; in modern age, 
296f.; in nineteenth century, 
396f.; in the Athenian period, 
117 

Ptolemy, 179, 181 

Pythagoreanism, 86f., 90ff., 
173ff . ; and Neoplatonism, 
202f.; and Orphic rehgion, 
74fl\, 91ff.; and Plato, 142; 
and Socrates, 132ff. 

Rationalism, 314ff.; in modern 
thought, 323fT., 401f. 

Realism, medieval, 263ff. 

Realism, the new, 409ff. 

Religion, and modern rational- 
ism and naturalism, 323ff.; 
Hellenistic, 167ff., 188ff.; its 
definition, 49f.; its evolution, 
50ff.; its relation to and in- 
fluence upon science, 54ff. 

Renascence, the classical, 280ff.; 
see Discovery, Age of 

Roman law, 21 Iff.; and law of 
nature, 218ff.; in middle ages, 
253, 259, 262, 282f . 

Romanticism, in middle ages, 
252, 272f.; in modern age, 
304ff., 369ff.; throughout 
European history, 76f . 

Rome, and Hellenism, 21 If. 

Rousseau, 307, 370 



INDEX 



439 



Schopenhauer, 309, 372f. 

Science, and philosophy, 14ff.; 
and primitive thought, 7ff . , 
36ff., 54fi\, 299f.; and reli- 
gion, 54fi\; in nineteenth cen- 
tury, 387ff.; its origin, 60ff.; 
its two major periods, 63f. 

Socialism, 420ff. 

SociaUzation, influence of civili- 
zation upon, 28 

Socrates, 132ff. 

Sophists, 11 If. 

Speculation, its definition, 33ff. 

Spinoza, 322, 331 

Stoicism, 186f ., 197ff. 



Suggestion, influence of civiliza- 
tion in decreasing, 25f . 

Teleology, and modern rational- 
ism and naturalism, 323f . 
Tyrrell, G., 380f . 

Vitalism, as a present tendency, 
400; in Aristotle's philosophy, 
154ff. 

Voltaire, 308 

Will, its primacy, 269f . 
Zeno, the stoic, 197 



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